Finger-puppets:

The swap-meet vendors were sprawled over the blacktop. They organized themselves into similar goods. Lines of displayed blankets lined the outside edge, obscuring any details from peering eyes. You had to pay to see the real variety. The whole place could be trash, or they could have hidden treasures at cheap prices, harvested from decomposed tourist towns. This swap-meet was a moving creature, not easily replicated.

The variety of blankets included a 3-wolf moon, a 5-wolf moon, religious characters, monster trucks, and countless psychedelic patterns. The blankets were only a tease.

I paid the entrance fee, got a stamp from the gatekeeper, who had probably spent the early morning setting out goods and propping up fences. The gatekeeper had seen it all, like a disillusioned seeker, the swap-meet was yesterday’s glamour. They looked back at me blankly, there were 40 more people behind me and many more would be oozing in throughout the day.

Once inside, my brain was plunged into an ocean of racks, pavilions, tarps, and in the middle was a temporary structure for restrooms and the promise of quality treasure tucked away. I fell into a comfortable stride; limiting my time at each stall, giving every bouquet of reused flowers a proverbial smell.

There were radio parts, car tools, rusted antiques, plastic containers, salad spinners, novelty hats, used running shoes, patio furniture, pieces of offices desks, unopened packages of socks, grimy coffee mugs, purses, oversized steel-toed boots, and of course the local chatter.

Conversation seemed to be a commodity here, if you shared a little gossip about the motion of the town, perhaps where some probate house was going public, or a juicy yard sale, you might find yourself on the receiving end of arm loads of junk. Small talk makes it happen, and if you had a critical perception you may notice the rules of the junk pile.

As I circled the swap-meet, I noticed only the premium junk was moving, perhaps the top cream. The rest was a prop, meant to contrast the high movers, this was basic marketing and the swap-meet folks survived on shuffling the junk from one place to another. They could appear generous by giving a child a bottle of bubbles, a hot dog token from the vendor in the enclosed structure at the center of the squirming mass of junk salesmen.

I spent the greater part of 3 hours walking the black top and shopping the junk pile. I picked up a heavy cloth grocery bag and a high-quality wine bottle cork screw. It was shaped like a pelican; the wings rose and fell with the cork removal.

The center building was my last stop. I needed some food and wanted to see the premium object. The structure resembled a makeshift medical refugee camp. They checked your stamp on the way in, gave you a cheap smile and pointed with a sweeping motion at the menagerie of goods.

There were knives, both practical and fantastical, Pakistani steel with dragon claws, curved blades for decoration and ritual knives for hunting. The kind of blades which no one ever uses but imagines uses in bizarre situations.

The stall with the blades was ran by a greasy man, slimly like a small-town mayor. I could feel him sizing me up, looking for an angle to sell me the perfect knife. I avoided him and slipped behind the stall and wandered deeper into the enclosed structure.

Behind a heavy black curtain was a dimly lit display case. I could see hands and fingers displayed with small wires and knobs sticking out from underneath. These were android parts, and there seemed to be as much variety in styles as the garden tools and blankets. I poured my gaze over them, soaking in the fingernails, palms, knuckles of seemingly endless variety.

From the corner of my eye I saw what looked like a pair of legs with striped socks from behind a curtain. When I looked over, they retracted as if someone had noticed my gaze. My curiosity got the better of me and I investigated the curtain for the owners of the legs.

Behind the curtain was more android parts, some with a higher technology than I have ever seen. The wires were tiny, nearly organic. I saw slack faces, wigs, male and female torsos, noses, legs, knee caps, elbows. They were in every color of skin tone, and some smaller and larger sizes I have never seen.

The merchant behind the counter was a blue-eyed Haitian woman with a comfortable presence. She said her name was Demigeist and invited me to take a closer look at some of the pieces, promising their utmost quality and acquisition. I got a predatory sense of the place and after some small talk felt the itch to move on to another stall. She saw me leaving and offered me a hot dog token. I was hungry and grateful to leave with too much interaction.

The hot dog stand was nearby, and the line was short. I got my process meat and consumed it with little chewing.

Upon finishing my meal, I felt a little dizzy and remember the smile of the Haitian woman and she invited me to have a seat and relax since I looked a little pale and weak. That was the last thing I remember.

I awoke to the busy noises of the swap-meet deconstructing. Stalls and goods were being packed up and put into smaller boxes. I tried to move but my arms and legs were gone, they had been removed as well as my lower jaw. I tried to scream and felt my stomach flip over in terrifying nausea. I was helpless to watch.

Demigeist came into view, her thin dreads bouncing as she walked. She approached me and told me the deal: “You can have your legs back, and your arms but only if you come with us to the next town and help with physical labor. If you do well you can have your jaw back, you belong to me now. There is no negotiation. Nod if you understand and agree, if not, I will piece the rest of you out as discount trash.”

I squinted, trying to wake from the nightmare, I could feel my eyes flush with tears. I nodded. What choice did I have? I worked as she commanded, and became her finger-puppet.

Mosquitoes:

Some people are torn between cultures, unaccepted by either world. For Jackie, she felt alien to human society; as if she could not leave, and could not return to some distant and lost dream.

Jackie felt like she lived under water, and she saw things in terms of aquatic life, as if people were schools of small fish moving as a swarm. As a youth she imagined the world submerged in slow motion. She saw beggars on the street as creatures of the deep; reaching out with their arms for nutrients passing by. Sometimes they looked like vicious toothed angler fish trolling the darkness of society. When she took a bath, she held her breath, thinking what it would be like to live as a fish, bound by the rules of water rather than the rules of society.

Jackie grew up next to the polluted Lake Erie. She had gone swimming in the waters when she was young, but as the years passed, the waters became corrupt and murky. In 1969 the pollution caught fire, and Jackie watched from the shoreline in mournful sorrow.

She tried to move away, but the lake itself kept her from going, it held her, and she was fixated without hope of release. Jackie was bound to the body of water. There wasn’t a week that went by which she did not visit the shoreline, stare into the toxic waves and wish to submerge herself in it. She imagined drifting down to the bottom as the waters slowly dissolved her flesh and clothes.

One sullen evening she was walking the shoreline, adding a few tears to the great lake. She noticed a small child, or perhaps a lost dog struggling to pull itself from the edge of the water.

When she approached, she could see that it had the face was indeed a small child, however its body resembled something of a grub or caterpillar. The segments squirmed with a gloss in the shadows of the evening light.

The face was adorable; big blue eyes and pleasant smile stared back up at her, and it cooed like a newborn. Jackie wrapped the creature in her jacket, whatever it was, its eyes rippled with a luster which she could not ignore.

Once Jackie returned to her house, she brought the larvae-like baby to the sink and washed off the slime of Lake Erie.

An hour later the larvae child was sleek and clean. It smiled wide and wiggled playfully as Jackie held it close. She talked to it like any other baby, and a couple hours later they both fell asleep in her living room.

In the morning the baby cried for food, Jackie responded instinctually, and after acquiring some baby food from the grocery store, it fell back asleep. Jackie kept the baby wrapped in blankets, with its little human head poking out. The larvae looked indistinguishable from a human baby.

Weeks went by, and Jackie found great fulfillment in caring for the thing. She named it Nomia. She couldn’t tell if the child was male or female, its body was obscured by the soft chitin.  It had no arms or legs and would have perished if Jackie had not cared for it. It was totally helpless, yet those inky blue eyes drew her in like the waters of Lake Erie.

On the second month the soft insect flesh started to grow over the face of the baby.

For days the eyes stared back from behind a growing opaque veil. Little arms could be seen sprouting and moving underneath. Then after a few more days human legs were distinguishable. The eyes stayed open and visible for a while, then they too closed and were covered in a cocoon.

Jackie told no one of little Nomia. Instinct had taken hold of her, all she cared about was keeping the baby warm and away from other people. For almost 2 weeks she watched the baby grow, until the cocoon skin seemed thin.

Little Nomia emerged from their cocoon a little human child, with all their legs and arms in all the places they should be. Nomia appeared to be a girl, but no human child had ever emerged from a cocoon, at least Jackie thought so. Not that any of this made any difference to how Jackie felt, she loved little Nomia and didn’t care where she came from, or what she was before, she was Jackie’s daughter now.

Jackie took the remnants of the cocoon to the shores of Lake Erie with Nomia. They both watched the waves with the same glassy eyes and threw the natal husk back into the toxic waters.

Breakout:

Full adult cloning can be a difficult process. There are few brains which can handle the ego reflection of multiple selves. The turbulence can cause a variety of aggressive and psychotic behaviors. Sometimes there are variables which go unnoticed until the clones interact with each other.

Hercules from historical Greek mythology was chosen for cloning. The DNA was constructed with a vision of the stories in mind, and the attributes were listed like a superficially described romance novel character: Broad muscular shoulders, right angles in the jawline, symmetrical face, fearless personality, and a strength to marvel and amaze. His body and brain were crafted with the idea that he could potentially achieve of the feats of heroism described in ancient adventures.

The grants slid under the market analysis barriers, no resistance, just a rubber stamp based on seemingly heroic qualities.

Memories were implanted into cloned people, based on the of mythology of their origin. The clones believed they had battled titans and hydras, they thought they had grown up on the shores of ancient islands. When consciousness was installed, there would be an indoctrination period, in which some dreamlike experience would onboard them to contemporary society. To a Hercules clone emerging from the natal chamber, he would believe he had just passed from Elysian Fields and into a new world of the metallic and strange.

Hercules v1 was a failure. He believed he had died and traveled to the world beyond, he was catatonic, listless and quickly perished from the shock.

Hercules v2 was revived after small chemical addition. The natal chamber let out a hiss as his eyes opened for the first time. Although he believed he had passed through a dream.

He did not care if he was naked, the majority of his life was spent without the clutter of garments. His feet slapped on the cold plastic floor as he wandered around the empty natal room. The room contained tiny lights, smoothly curved walls, and a variety of wet tubes traveling to nearby devices.

Hercules v2 scrambled over the room, poking and prodding the devices. He beat on the walls, listening to see if they were thin. He kicked the doors with a grunt: no escape.

The process for awaking clones is a fragile one. Basic stressors are applied during emergence to determine if the clone brain has the capacity for continued existence. For this reason, cloning centers are rarely occupied by anyone. All monitoring and containment is managed off-site with cameras. This process is also very important when involving clones or constructs with higher abilities, dangerous skills or a temperamental psychology. Hercules had all of these, and without an obvious exit. If he could deal with being trapped, he had a chance at understanding the technocratic authority of his new world.

The cloning facility itself was replaceable: rooms, windows, doors, equipment, foundation, each and every shred organic and inorganic material was designed to be replaceable.

Hercules v2 waited for 3 hours in confusion. He paced the cold floor, wondering what sort of prison he was locked in, what demon or god had need of him? He found no answers, this only frustrated him into a quick devolution. He was already close to the edges of rage from being shoved into a world of alien contraptions.

By the 4^th hour he was prepared to die, but not before seeing what kind of damage he could inflict. With a laugh and a yell, he drop-kicked the natal chamber. He smashed the brittle plastic and metal bits into a pile of umbilical trash. Then made a running slam towards the doors of the small room.

The first slam knocked the wind out of him. He recovered, grunted and slammed his head into the door handle with fearless exhilaration, shattering the electronic lock. His body was designed to take far more damage, and the lack of marks from the experience reinforced his demigod ego.

His bronze-skinned body parts flopped down the hallway in a spasmodic frenzy. He rushed to little windows of other rooms, looked in and then slammed his fists through the glass, battered the doors, threw himself at the walls, and head-butted the ceiling in a series of frantic jumps. The rage crept up on him and adrenaline flowed freely through his veins and into his freshly minted brain.

This was the first time his neurons were used, memories lit up like fires, and his brain burnt itself into a solid flame of indestructible mania. Hercules screamed as he pushed his knee through a wall in a running attempt to find new doors and get out of this alien prison.

Behind one of the walls he found another room, one with another natal chamber. When he looked through the translucent plastic, he saw himself there, asleep. His own visage was reflected back at him. He didn’t hesitate, he annihilated the natal chamber with a furry of wrenching confusion. His brain considered it and rejected it, his ego could not handle multitudinous. He gouged the clones face, ripped off the limbs and hurled them at the wall. He kept one of the limbs; a leg with a dangling foot.

Hercules continued his rampage for 3 hours before finding the exit. The exterior wall took some time to breakdown, and by now his makeshift leg-club was reduced to a single femur. The sky above was a dark blue with 3 moons, the twilight cast multiple shadows over a barren landscape.

Waiting for him outside was a fleet of 3-armed machines ready to contain him for further processing. They descended on him with stun rays, chemicals and large glue cannons. He was rendered unconscious within 3 minutes. Then he was packaged and delivered to a secondary holding facility.

Hercules v2 was a success, his mind had endured the trauma of imprisonment, birth and self-reflection. He was allowed to keep his club, and would be released into society once the next phase of psychological onboarding was complete.

Eye Contact:

Medusa had a difficult childhood. Her gaze required a bit of isolation, and behavioral correction to avoid eye contact. This didn’t stop fame from intruding upon her life nor the clouds of security personnel from circling her like flies.

She learned to appreciate being lonely. Friendship meant being a little blind and romantic relationships often resulted in new sculptures put into her yard. Medusa’s gaze turned carbon-based life into stone. She was created from the imagination of ancient mythology. The process involved genetic alteration, nanotechnology, and optical implants which operated like small gamma radiation reactors.

Fame was a dark ocean and Medusa couldn’t swim yet, she sank like a stone.

The taboo of being seen by a creature who could effectively kill you was irresistible to the greater population. At this time in history, being seen was the highest achievement of a citizen. Being seen meant you existed, or you made an impact on someone. People were desperate, for example: someone could lick a doorbell for 3 hours, fully in sight of a security camera, and knowing people within would be shivering with high magnitude jibblies when they reviewed the footage. Some call it the creeps or the willies. Whatever it is called, the satisfaction of knowing you caused a reaction meant you occupied someone’s dreams or nightmares. A 21st century example is Ricardo Lopez who committed suicide in a maniacal obsession to leave a lasting impact on the artist Bjork. He had tried to kill her but failed, so he killed himself.

The frequency of such behavior increased over the years.

Society became overtly public, there is nothing which cannot be known about someone. The desire for attention caused great tides of seemingly senselessness predators. Medusa had 4 people kill themselves through her gaze when she was 13. They knew the consequences, they knew Medusa had been given lethal powers of transmutation. They wanted to be the first to die by her eyes. They recorded the whole thing, and within weeks there was a dozen copy cats echoing the madness. Medusa did not handle it well.

At first, she hated it, and avoided people at all costs. This only provoked more attention, and the limelight shined down as she was hoisted up on a pedestal for those seeking a glorious end, if even for a few seconds. She cried and screamed at the faces of those dying before her, because of her. She asked herself with frustrated tears, why she was given such vain power.

Early adulthood occupied 7 seasons of Plutonium Television programming, she became primetime. There was even a spin-off show dedicated to a fanatical cult group called the Serpent’s Eyes, who collected the stone statues of the momentarily famous to be exhibited in an elaborate garden. Medusa reviled them, she thought of turning them all to stone, but she knew it would only encourage the behavior, any interaction encouraged more interaction.

Medusa had few relationships. The most intimate was with a blind woman named Lucy who had become immune to the appearance of glamour, and fame meant nothing to her. They enjoyed each other’s company, and later they flowered together, blossoming into a beautiful romance.

Lucy had no eyes of any kind, neither cybernetic, crystalline, or augmented. She could have had eyes if she desired but preferred not to look at the horror of existence. She had seen an immense visionary experience, as well as its shadow. Neither were enough for Lucy, and she opted to plunge herself into a well of voluntary darkness. She didn’t care if Medusa had a cult following, obsessed stalkers or roving eyes of surveillance, the whole mess was senseless to her.

Medusa found peace in Lucy’s eyeless perception.

At least until Lucy was compelled by her fate, her programming. Lucy was a seeker, and did not abide stagnation very long, neither in love nor in peace. Another vision compelled her, one she could not describe to Medusa. This new vision was itchy, a preternatural pulse. Deep down in her circuits, she was compelled towards some unknown destination by some unknown wanderlust.

The last time they embraced was on the space station of Luyten-B. They parted with many tears, Lucy could not cry in a technical sense, but her heart wrenched between the jeweled emptiness of space and the arms of her lover. Medusa gave her a Gorgoneion, an amulet made by her cult followers, a charm of symbolic adoration for the death-eyed Queen of Serpents. The circle of glass was adorned in blue jewels, depicting a bust of Medusa with the words etched below: “Only the eyeless can kiss the serpent.” Lucy ran her fingers over the glass impression of the face.

They held each other until the memory of their touch was etched into their hearts. Lucy boarded a space vessel and started her journey to a distant and remote system. Medusa watched the twinkling star-filled sky from the orbiting station and wondered for a moment if stars could be turned to stone.

The event, though televised in the afterhours of Plutonium Television would serve a loyal viewership, and many of the cult followers removed their own eyes in symbolic reverence for their star-crossed queens.

The Confession of a Pyromaniac:

I was locked away for the afternoon. The patrols interrupted the hours of the day with black boots on the cement. I watched them carefully; their glass visors made them look like sleek insects crawling in formation, like a single creature with 12 skittering legs. Their pattern was box shaped and could be reproduced by an insect mind.

Even though I was contained, my didn’t have to rent out my mind to mundane behaviors like patrolling. I rent mine out to the RT corporation as a thinking asset nothing moral, just pattern recognition. My thinking can be replaced, and when the wave of change comes, I hope to be out of this place, and away from these flies.

My home is not much different, but at least it’s warm.

At home the box had smaller rooms; places to hide things, places undisturbed. The basement is mercifully devoid of people. My husband doesn’t like the dust and the dark, my children are since moved out and found their own worlds to lock themselves away in.

My friends are warm sometimes, on holidays and the occasional party. Last New Year’s we drank too much, and they overshared themselves. I don’t overshare anymore, I cut that away long ago, everything that is important is hidden down in the basement; in the dust and darkness.

Last week my family stayed, and one of my nephews explored the basement on their own impulse. I found little finger prints all over a black wooden box. I was so angry, I wish kids could keep their hands to themselves and out of my darkness. I have since locked the doors.

The basement is filled with my childhood, college years and molting from when my children were young. Boxes and boxes of small trinkets, clothes, pieces of ribbons, and letters from my husband. I have 12 boxes of clothes, and 16 small boxes of jewelry that I haven’t looked at in years. 

Years ago, my husband pursued me, he chased after my heart. We would sit on the beach and stare over the waves, he would ask me things in the language of my heart. The deep speech was like the waves, it rolled over us with old magic, stretching into the bottom of the ocean. He chased me to the depths, dragging my heart to the surface, and cresting in the sunlight as we kissed.

I was the dark water and he was the sun; burning brightly as streaks of light filled the waters.

That was 23 years ago. My depths have grown, my darkness still crawls on the bottom like a creature of the black. He is still the sun, and his light can no longer pierce my depths. I see him now as a fire, stable, yet hungry. He can’t see in my basement; the dust and the darkness are too thick.

So, I keep my boxes warm and watch over him from my voluntary confinement, as he burns all around me. He is quick to judgment, angry at the world, frustrated with senselessness, and belligerent against the tides of society. He doesn’t look into the water or see the waves.

He is still a beautiful flame, and like any fire, he requires some tending. If left unchecked he will exhaust friends and family, he will fall into self-destructive behavior and consume whoever is nearby. His therapist calls it mania. I call it beautiful, and since he can not reach me anymore, I can watch at a distance.

Last weekend for example he worked himself up into a tower of rage over some political issue. He was angry and passionate, he was bursting with hot fire. I teased him, asking why he doesn’t do something about it. Why doesn’t he lay down his life to continue the long tradition of assignation in this country? I tried to incite him, stoke it to the brightness of our younger days.  

Of course he never does anything, and after my provocation he falls into despair. I imagine that someday I can push him far enough, someday he will snap and burn himself to cinders. I want to see that fire, I want to see his sharp light pierce the bottom, the ocean and the basement, and see it scour the sky in a red rage.

Until that unlikely pyre,  I’ll love the fire for keeping me warm.  

The Sermon of Harmony:

The mutants of today are unlike anything found in evolutionary history.  Today’s deformed are firmly within 2 groups, the first is the robotic, the intentional. These deformations are creatures created to reflect the desires of human beings, their mythos, their stories, creatures designed to live out the fates described in religious texts or satisfy the appetites of a sophisticated society. They are strictly regulated by a singular Church, an institution of control. These creatures have divine purpose programmed into their existence.

The second group of abominations are called the Voids. They are antibiotically scrubbed, washed of microbes, viruses, any biological influence. They are sterile purists and their sin is avoidance of the biological. They are isolated, confined, removed from society for their own benefit. Their prison is invisible, their slavery to medicines and civilization is absolute, without constant sterilization they would become overwhelmed and perish. The Voids fill the honeycomb of expansive cities, and they live out their lives in small impersonal spaces.

Such separation leads to brittle fates, crystalline peaks ready to fracture. While countless humans lived and died within the crystalline society, a few escaped through the cracks.

Bethany Ultrix shattered easily. She was a Void who had been infected. She had lost herself, her identity erased, and her purpose realigned to propagate a wider biological existence. The many arms of life wrapped around her and rebuilt her, not as a new person but as a new living city of life.

She survived being infected, she survived the absolute loss of self., and once infected, various viruses, bacteria, and countless microbes woke up within her. She could eat plants from the ground, breathe air from the wind, and touch other creatures again. With the loss of identity, she called herself simply: Ultrix.

Ultrix met others like her; those who had been shattered and survived.

Together their variety thrived, they exchanged qualities, and they infected each other with the most durable viruses and bacteria. They became the predators, they became the carriers of New Life. They spent their time cultivating stomach slime to attract phages, tiny lunar-lander viruses to help their bacterium. They managed their own waste, their own food and acted purely upon the expansion of life.

Due to the sterile methods of the Church, viruses and bacteria were required to spore. They had to desiccate themselves in a way, hibernate into structures which were invisible to the antibiotics. Like any arms race, the microbes waited until they could win, until they could bloom again.

Ultrix had become such an oasis after infection. She was a beautiful spectrum of variety. She carried thousands of strains, hundreds of re-bloomed creatures who had laid dormant for countless ages, and they were ready to eat.

Like any predator Ultrix sought easy prey. Infection of other human beings was easy, but rarely guaranteed survival, as most Voids died from initial contact. After dozens of scratches from her thin claws, the microbes within her devised an altogether new idea, a new entrance into the heart of the brittle Voids.

Mimicry was difficult at first, Ultrix lacked self-identity required to interact with society. She had to fake it. Her eyes had been hijacked by an ancient amoeba, one which could handle complex problems through sophisticated chemical processes. The amoeba was given direct ocular access. The creature played Ultrix like a puppet, navigating the complex word of social interaction with Voids via electronic screen interplay. The amoeba played the seduction game to lure Voids from their sterile environments.

The first assimilation was teased out over a year. Until finally the urge for contact compelled the Void out of isolation. Ultrix had not bathed since her infection; her bloom was full, and in perfect balance. No microbe dominated her body, and no intelligence claimed the throne of consciousness.

Contact was made through a kiss.

Then they were 2, Ultrix’s full bloom was passed to another without them perishing. The balance was transferable, and as the microbial paradise multiplied so did the kisses. The singular identities were washed away, and their bodies wrapped around each other, squirming like primordial nematodes. 

There is no timeline for complete assimilation of human society, there is no guesswork. Life does not deal in the commodity of fate, but in the spaces for growth.

If there is to be a full bloom that covers the world, it will be due to humanity finding harmony, finding new creatures to turn into. It will not be from shrinking into smaller and smaller spaces but growing into larger ones. It must not be forgotten: all life is New Life.

Summertime:

Sunday morning, I woke up to the static wash of consciousness. A dream had been scrubbed from me, I don’t know how, but I didn’t spend the night above ground. I was deep in the black, and the only reason I got to Sunday was because the mountain slipped.

Saturday night was the 3rd time I saw Rose Windows.

The first time I saw Rose Windows was outside, and they had 7 band members at the time. I remember the chorus, it was the dark dream of rock and roll came to life. Rabia had it, she had the spark, the fire and the voice of the storm flowed through her. I was hooked and followed the dream to Portland. 

The second time I saw them they opened for someone else. It doesn’t matter who for, they stole the show. People had just started getting loose for the night, chatting in the bar-line when they opened. Her voice caught them too, they shuffled over the stage, drawn into the swirls of living dreamtime. Like a siren bringing sailors to the rocks, they were shown the darkness too, and down they went, just like me.

The 3^rd time was in Seattle again. The venue was forgettable, and the drinks were weak. The opening band was a pack of old punks, they pulled out 14 songs in 30 minutes. Like an old habit, they put the fire on the stage with half-closed eyes.

Rabia was in the crowd during the opening band, I got to talk to her, but she already knew.

Then Rose Windows took the stage, the familiar chemistry started the combustion, fire rose in her voice with a flight of demons and the guitar heralded the chorus. The stage became an altar, and the musicians became priests or acolytes dutifully tending their pre-rehearsed rites.

I was another pair of eyes, another pair of ears soaking what I could.

Rabia let it out.

“Death will come sweetly, as the wind, the bow, the stone…”I was lost in the words, the voice and the heavy psychedelic rock and roll. I looked around briefly between songs and saw others had the same glassed look that I had, eyes lost in a rare syrup of music. The band resembled more and more of an occult rite as the night continued.

I had 2 more drinks and let the night seep into my head. There was a brief lull while Rabia chatted with the audience, giving time for the band to change instruments and Rabia to slow the stage down. Little did I know at the time, but she had something special planned.

Rabia started without instruments, then a guitar and light drums joined in. The song was Summertime by Gershwin. Rabia unleashed it at first with the low and heavy, then rose into a beautiful screech of high tension. Her fingers curled, her eyes closed, and the rite unfolded. She shot the song out of her heart, straight from the pits, with a smooth darkness, full of teeth.

The song was alive, it breathed with Rabia’s breath, it moved with our bodies, and for 5 minutes the creature filled the room. The dark dream of rock and roll was a living nightmare, and we wanted more.

The remaining songs of the night were excellent, a tribute to their skill and expression. Nothing however, hit the peak of the mountain again. They ended the night with the same song as they ended previous shows, and the ceremony concluded. The lights came up, I looked over to my girlfriend, my friends and we all had the same eyes, we had been submersed and wanted back in.

The show was 4 years ago, and I have held on to whatever hasn’t been washed by erosion. When people talk about what they would lay their lives down for, my impulse is to mention this night. While others may lay down for war, nation, family, whatever higher purpose their hearts are pinned to, I think if I was pressured into such a choice, I would lay on the altar of music. Rabia would bring the knife down and my blood would flow with the swirls of dark dreams, I would be a willing sacrifice for music. There are things in life worth dying for, and within those 5 minutes of deep darkness that perhaps all wild things hunger for: would be the fate for me.

At least until the I wake from the delirium of sacrifice.

It may be saying too much that the altar of music is worth it, there are so many altars to choose from these days: so many purposes, plans, great and beautiful spires of overwhelming experience that can drag you along with it. There are countless visions, plots, revolutionary movements of good intentions, better worlds, distant utopias, feverish and deterministic insanities bent on swallowing up the very last drops of blood from the human heart. 

Rabia and the band broke up years ago, the turbulence sunk its teeth in, and greater tides carried them to other places. Now I’m just a stone in the avalanche from that distant Summertime; when the mountain relented and let the darkness out from between its thin cracks.

XX-66:

Between the 545^th generation and the 547^th, the population of the seed-ship hurtled through the edges of interstellar space. The generation was distinguished by a set of purple gills on the sides of the necks, they had no idea why such an evolution afflicted them, or what gills could be used for, these human beings had never been in water. 

The asteroids and other space trash offered no real threat, their icy bodies were forced out of the path of the ship by a gravimetric cow-catcher.

The previous generations of human beings also called the seed-ship home. They had lived and died within its hulking alloy form as it spun through the great distances between stars. The destination planned for arrival during the 805^th generation.

Human beings were not the only life form aboard. An intelligence was also active within the ship, it behaved like a social janitor. Its responsibilities were to keep order at all costs; there was no room for a revolution or change of plans. Nothing was allowed to threaten the functions or purpose of the seed ship. Years before the ship had entered space, its destination was carefully planned; every trajectory calculated with the most exquisite precision.

The next generation of human beings were emerging from natal chambers, a process carefully watched over by the janitorial intelligence. Like the previous generations, the intelligence had been intentionally evolving the humans for a specific reason: Assimilation into the new environment of the distant planet XX-66.

The genetic influence took 2-3 generations for any alterations to stick, requiring that the human beings sexually select and incorporate the new changes into a stable genome. The computer’s job was to convince the human beings the new genetic changes were sexy.

The first attempt was the easiest and usually was enough. The computer intelligence would carefully introduce pleasant images, associative advertisements and a peppering of dream snapshots. This resulted in growing teenagers with strange urges that were loosely connected to the image of purple gills.

It didn’t work this time; the attempt had the opposite effect.

When the teenagers became adults the idea of gills became taboo, disgusting, and socially repugnant. Gills were shunned, and there was little sexual selection.

It is worth noting that the computer intelligence was relatively neutral in all social aspects except for the assimilation of genetics. The population was allowed to flex by 30-40%, and if it dipped below due to some massacre or genocide, the computer would insulate the next generation of children before releasing them into society.

The space-ship janitor allowed for the illusion of choice but nothing which would threaten the ship or the mission to the distant planet.

The gills pushed such limits. The visual difference between people was polarizing, striking and impossible to ignore. Humanity divided themselves, and separate cultures began to form. Normally an extra finger or internal rearrangement was relatively invisible, making difference harder to determine, but with the purple gills, the population degraded into the Fish-faces versus the Smooth-necks.

The Smooth-necks separated themselves. Fish-faces solidified their identity through persecution.

Over the next 20 years the differences kept them apart, even though they had to occupy the same space ship. The Smooth-necks grew desperate, they felt like their genetics were being bred out, not by the computer, but by the Fish-faces.

This led to another attempt at genocide. The computer stepped in at the last moment when the population reached a reckless level. The Smooth-necks were forcibly ejected and the gravimetric cow-catcher pushed their icy bodies out of the path.

This purge did not help the Fish-faces, who had developed a sense of wrongness about themselves, that they were deformed, damaged or an abomination. For so long have they been told they were sub-human, or a deformity to the degree which their self-identity included an infectious streak of shame and guilt.

The purple gills had no purpose, no use, is was a completely senseless and correct assumption on the part of the Fish-faces. They had no idea they were being prepared for a clandestine location.

They transferred their sense of useless guilt onto the next generation, who of course had purple gills as well. The guilt was inherited as easily as the new genetic code.

This type of genetic meandering and conflict resolution continued safely until it reached the final 805^th generation. The planet XX-66 was only a few years away, and the occupants still had no idea how close their destiny was.

The humanoid creatures on board, which had become a completely different species, were burdened by an unusually heavy sense of guilt and senselessness regarding their existence. Their appendages useless for managing onboard controls, their breathing requiring masks and cumbersome suits. Their society had developed to a guilty sense of sexuality and a futile sense of endless imprisonment.

When the space ship landed, and the door open, the computer shut itself down. Its job was finished, its program completed, a digital catharsis washed over the machine intelligence and it drifted off to dreams of euphoric completion.

The creatures who emerged however, had no such feelings of order. They had known only confusion, and the alien world offered only another horizon of the unknown.

The following generation found life easy, benefitting from all the seemingly useless physical and mental deformities. The gills helped in colonizing the oceans, their respiration required no suits and their sexual selection was unburdened by an authoritative janitor.

Human life had dragged 800 or so generations through slavery for a momentary chance at a wider horizon. The mission was a success.

Obsolete:

Isabelle inherited a barn. The kind of structure that had been through decades of neglect. Large holes in its roof let rain inside, and whatever Isabelle’s uncle had stored within had quickly fallen into a rusty smear of metal and spider webs. It was as if 2 large fangs had sunk through the roof by a venomous pterodactyl, a large fleshy flying dinosaur which had delivered its fictional bite from beyond the curtain of extinction.

With the mortal roof-wound, corrosion had seeped into every corner of the barn, coupled the failing age of Isabelle’s uncle, the battle against extinction was a losing one.

Isabelle was not a country girl, she had lived her whole life in the city, behind its cement protection and under roofs maintained with tax dollars and good intentions. She had dreamed of the country; the green fields and warm nights empty of consideration for the frantic world which had been reduced to a static whine.

Her physician called it tinnitus, and after a couple of insanely expensive tests determined her hearing was failing. The whine she heard was her brain filling the void with sounds it once heard; an echo of the auditory impulse. Isabelle was convinced that the pitched whine would go away once the hum of civilization was behind her. She looked at the inheritance of her uncle’s barn as a boon.

Isabelle had no children, no wife or husband, and she had few close friends. She thought her lack of friends was due to her high standards and she never relented her high standards.

The trip to the barn and its tiny companion house was a 3-hour flight and a 2-hour drive. When she reached the house, she was exhausted and only glimpsed the barn in the shadows of the evening. It looked like a hunched over homeless bum, it’s head slack between it’s a symmetrical shoulders. The hulking shape dwarfed the companion house.

Isabelle could see the barn from the bedroom window. The dusty curtains were pulled tight and the musty smell of the old house ushered her into dreamless sleep.

In the morning the barn looked less ominous, less urgent. It appeared as all things do when framed next to the lush green of neglected weeds, it looked like it was slipping into a morbid repose, as if the barn was reclining on its back on the green earth. The peaceful sight almost invited exploration.

Isabelle started her inspection after coffee, an acidic tincture made from sub-par beans.

The sky was clear, but the entrance reeked of wet and mold. When she approached with a flashlight, the darkness seemed to swallow up the light, it was opaque, thick, and revealed nothing.

Upon closer inspection the barn was filled with antique farm equipment, a phrase she heard the locals use as a racial pejorative. They were covered in dusty canvases, and black and green mold climbed up the edges. The smell was a mix of dry rot and iron.

Isabelle removed one of the canvases to reveal a threshing device; a rusted bed of spikes and corroded gears that had long ago been paralyzed with age. She ran her finger over on the spikes, lightly brushing the rust powder with an innocent curiosity. She didn’t want any of this, but the monstrance stood as a testament to its own beauty.

One by one she uncovered the relics her uncle left her: A thresher, a plow, 2 partial car engines, various hooks, a lathe, 3 water heaters, a solid iron refrigerator, a 7ft tall pile of rotten ropes, and a workbench with a vice which had dislocated itself and fallen to the floor nearby. The entire contents of the barn contained nothing but useless objects halfway submerged in their own graves.

The roof was in a state of near collapse, and looking from inside the 2 holes appeared as blue and endless eyes looking down on the gave of objects in solemn indifference. Isabelle found the scene peaceful, so often were things replaced with the new and clean in the city that the sight of intimate decay had given her a sense of truth. There was no lie in the rust and mold, there was no attempt to thwart an inevitable decline.

When night came it seemed almost absurd to lock the doors of the barn. What was being kept out? What would a flimsy door protect against? Isabelle still closed everything up best that she could, as if the locks prevented the rot from spreading to the tiny house where she slept.

The house itself was part of the inheritance as well, probably the only thing of value. Isabelle drank a bottle of wine which she brought with her. She gazed out the small window as the night claimed the barn again, contorting it into a sleeping creature with slumped shoulders and hollow rusty bones.

She fell asleep easily, her tinnitus drowned out by the wine.

The next morning her head pounded with the high-pitched whine of a high sulfite hangover. The task of deciding what to do with the house seemed cumbersome and pointless. She winced at the sunlight and went to look around the barn again for inspiration, perhaps the car parts could be worth something, you never know with those old antiques.

The barn was dry today, the lack of rain and exposure to the sky had let the place breathe a little. Isabelle heard creaking and shifting as the wet wood flexed under the evaporation of a warm day. Still she found nothing of value; not in any of the dark corners or under any canvases.

The second day was boring for Isabelle, as was the third and fourth. Each day the wood got drier and closer resembled that of kindling. The though of burning the whole thing down wormed its way into her head on the 4^th night. It was useless anyways, why not give it that final push into its grave. She had no need for rusted and obsolete relics.

The absence of anything except the barn made her tinnitus worse, the pitch had grown in volume, the stretch of time in the rural world was not something she was prepared for. It was so unchanging, empty, there was nothing to do. Nature’s lushness was diminished by the high-pitch, made into a cumbersome and rotten task.

The 5^th night was intolerable, the whine dwarfed any thought she had. The looming barn reminded her of the rusted thresher and how it would have sounded if the gears would have worked or the points would sound when sliding against each other.

The 6^th day was marked by a nightmare of a rusted mouth with thresher teeth devouring the tiny house. On the 6^th day, in the afternoon Isabelle lit the barn on fire. She sparked a lighter on a dry canvas and watched the black plumes roll out of the 2 holes on the roof.

No fire trucks came, no neighbors complained, not a single person carried if her uncles dilapidated barn was being pushed into the grave. The fire itself roared into the evening, it drowned out her tinnitus and ushered her into a deep and peaceful sleep.

In the morning Isabelle was ready to return to the city. She sold the tiny house and property. The fire had taken everything with it, the iron, the wood, the piles of ropes, everything. All that remained was a black smudge that would wash away easily when the rains returned.