Deep-space Honeymoon:

In the afterhours of interstellar space, on a planet with only 150 million inhabitants, and 2 androids who walked among human settlers. Perhaps there were more of the Loa style androids on the planet, but none which survived its awakening. This planet was also a designed creature and was reaching a maturity of its existence.

While it slept, the 150 million bronze age level humans went about their daily lives. The 2 androids lived much like the humans did, and they both desired to remain invisible to the population. They had come to the planet to escape the cameras, and beyond the reach of the universe’s largest predators.  Medusa and Lucy lived in a cabin of the upper mountain range of the northern continent.

Lucy and Medusa chose Moloch-3 for its privacy. Interstellar space has little residential options, but plenty of nothingness is every direction to feel like nobody is watching. Life in the forest cabin was peaceful.

Lucy, who was blind found the forest noises and night creatures to be of great source of imagination. She would listen and stretch her awareness out over the night, until some bird or evening croaker broke the silence. Medusa listened also and avoided looking at the source. If she focused too hard, and she caught whatever it was in her gaze, it would turn to stone. Sometimes days would pass as they listened to the hum of the strange place, interrupted by only the small hisses of Medusa’s snakes.

They took care of each other, enjoyed each other’s time and generally reflected the peaceful world around them.

The world around them however was not so peaceful. The colony ship which crashed only a few thousand years before had already slipped into a dark age of technology. The onboard computer was destroyed in the descent and any remaining artifacts were worshiped out of superstition and fear. The human colony lived in tents, castles, small towns and villages. They made new stories for the stars, made war for the sake of land and resources and started the long journey back into the stars. Occasionally a pilgrim or traveler would stumble upon the cab of Medusa and Lucy. Medusa would simply turn them to stone and store them in a cave. She did not want another cult following her or worshipping her.

If Lucy found them, she made them tea and asked what sort of world events were happening. She heard a little over the years, enough to know to keep her mouth shut about a larger galactic world spinning on without any notice to this little planetoid. Medusa would return after hunting, turn the human being to stone, remind Lucy there must not be anyone who know their location.

For years they lived in peace and isolation, or so they thought. Being a Loa style android meant there was always huge swaths of the population willing to party for a first-person login. Perhaps Lucy knew, but she had no intention of shattering the peace with Medusa. Eventually the peace crumbled, as did the mountains and forests.

At the crest of a billion year orbit the planet finished its gestation.

First its immune system activated. Millions of bacteria antibodies were activated and began breaking down all organic matter. To the human beings on the surface, their skin turned black, then began the decay process. This happened while the humans were still alive, creating a senseless frenzy of supreme terror and violence.

Castles were overrun, villagers burned, and the 150 million people rotted into puddles of black slime. Soon the trees followed, then the remaining creatures, except Lucy and Medusa, they were unaffected by the planet’s immune system. Lucy heard it first, she heard the creatures suffering, she heard the slow decline of birds and beasts, she heard the crack and fall of trees. Finally, she heard the slow hum of rot covering everything. To Lucy, the wider world had caught up with them, suffering and violence could not be escaped.

Medusa was thrilled at the rotten apocalypse. No longer would random villagers and explorers find their cabin or disturb the peace. She encouraged Lucy to stay calm.

“Lucy there is nothing left to interrupt us, there is nothing to intrude upon our love. Surely in the wake of violence there is peace?”

Lucy said nothing, if nothing is what Medusa wanted, then she would remain silent.

The silence lasted only a year. Then the planet stretched itself. Like a curled fetus in the womb, it reached its legs and arms out. Its fingernails were the mountains, its fingers the crashing avalanches of mountain ranges. The dirt and stone rose up into columns of electric storms, with static friction rolling thunder in every direction. Great explosions, deafening movements of crashing continents.

Medusa and Lucy were stricken with pain as the noise blossomed into a wail of abysmal intensity. For days the planet changed it shape, until it resembled a humanoid figure. 4 appendages stuck out from a molten center and a head, which only appeared to be a head, settled as a smaller globe atop the new creation. The atmosphere was gone and only the sharp glare of distant stars remained as a light source. The magma core flashed and rumbled after the first spasms, each time a sensation of acceleration could be felt.

Medusa lived by shadow light and Lucy remined silent. Medusa was full of questions, she was ripe with the darkness of the unknown, and the pain of the experience lingered on without explanation.

“Why?” Cried Medusa.

“I have sought such answers my entire existence, any answer only pushes the darkness away for a little while. It always returns as a new shape, a new senseless phenomenon.” Lucy broke the silence with slow words.

Such conversations take years to hear, and Medusa was not listening, she was beginning to starve. There was no life left to consume on the creature-planet.

Less than a month later the planet-creature arrived next to an unnamed space station.  Medusa could see its glint and shape from her crumbling cabin. She was eager to find some food and hopefully someone to explain the rotten apocalypse. Day and night were at first erratic, then settled into a slow rotation as the planet creature started to receive visitors.

As with all Loa Style android, there comes a certain protection of the Church of Loa. Every safeguard is put in place to make sure the creations of the Church survive, this includes contracts with the monolithic broadcast company called Plutonium Television.  When the planet was scanned, and the managers of the space station found 2 survivors they sent shuttles down to process them back into civilization.

The explanation was described after showers and food.

The planet was a seed, and its purpose was to be born as a participant in a new show for Plutonium Television called The Battle of Titans. Planets from all over the universe were grown and then battled around the massive gravitational area of the ULAS-13 quasar. The planets would smash into each other, breaking pieces of themselves off with each strike, until one remained Medusa and Lucy were shown an advertisement for the large-scale world wrestling. The planet they had been riding on, like a flea or a mite, was called Moloch-1.

From the space station window Medusa watched and described the gigantic costume which would be attached the planet’s form in preparation for the upcoming intergalactic spectacle. Thousands of a kilometers of fringe, titanic amounts of bright polyester and a pair of sun glass the size of a large continent was attached to the head-shape on the planet, as if the planet had eyes to cover.

Lucy Shook her head, almost preferring the lack of explanation.

Gorlox-12:

In the age of Plutonium Television 3 powers rule the universe; The Church of Loa, New Life and Plutonium Television. The technology of television has advanced since the archaic word had relevance, now it refers to a specific brand, a specific company with near unadulterated influence.

Plutonium Television originally aired in the late hours of galactic midnight, a common point of reference for time. Regardless of time dilation or experience the reference point stuck. The first show to gain galactic and then later multiple galactic audiences was the namesake of the company. Plutonium was a popular voting show where participants voted to destroy 1 of 6 planets in the galaxy with large plutonium warheads. The company got further funding and structure form arms dealers and of course overwhelming support from the populations of the universe.

Their reach has touched every inhabited planet, asteroid and even comets on the icy carousel of falling oblivion. Ina practical sense, Plutonium Television has united all sentient life under a common media. Since the first couple of planets exploded, so has their power.

Their programing expanded to include a wide variety of shows. This variety is maintained by the trillions of life forms looking for points of reference to communicate and interact with each other. All sorts of cultures, wars, societies and companies have been built on the foundation of a universal media connection. From cooking shows featuring the exotic slugs of Nevus-5 or the wholesome triumphs of the space Olympics, where the most contorted of bodies compete in trivial yet monumental feats of cellular strength.

The most watched program for the last couple of centuries has been a reality show called Terrible Existence for Terrible People. A weekly galactic hour-long journey into the lives of the most painful, terrifying or tragic types of existences lifeforms can experience.

Like a bright flame of Hell, the moths of the universe flocked to watch. This included those without eyes like the seeker Lucy, who has been traveling the universe in search of something she can not name. Her travels, and the bright lights of the Plutonium Television cameras have come to the planet called Gorlox-12 where the 3 worst existences are played out on the same planet.

The first segment, which first attracted Lucy to the planet, was how Gorlox-12 dealt with homeless lifeforms.

The natives of Gorlox-12 are long since extinct, but their culture has survived. They were a 4-armed race of sleepers. They considered dreaming a sacred experience, a mystical and important part of life. All language, holidays, and culture derived form the bubbling visions of unconsciousness. The Gorloxians evolved with sleep and dreaming as being paramount to their life and when they entered into the deep spaces of intergalactic society, they had no problems with early space travel. Sometimes taking hundreds of generations to reach new places, sleeping became essential for any relocation.

They did reach new places, and new places reached them. Their dreaming culture became well known, even iconic. Within 2000 years Gorlox-12 became a pinnacle of tourism for dreamers; seekers looking for some vision beyond the boundaries of rational thought. This also included predators, creatures who loved the flesh of sleeping dreamers, who if woken precisely at the time of death would provide a tasty indulgence of sadistic joy.

Eventually the predators found and devoured all the Gorloxians. Their planet was sized by the Plutonium Television corporation and used as a stage of sorts. They invited all planets to send their homeless, their indigent and unwanted members of society to the dreaming world of Gorlox-12.

There are cameras everywhere on Gorlox-12 and any viewer can meander around watching any number of people doing any number of mundane activities. The goal of this voyeurism is in hope they will sleep and dream. This attracts the leathery winged predators who were responsible for the extinction of the natives. Such a spectacle is common and encouraged.

The drugs on Gorlox-12 also provide another temptation, the dreaming compounds available for ingestion rival anything this side of galaxy IC-1101. Most people, regardless of their station in life would die to visit the sleeping tents of the Black Plateau, a place of predatory consumption, where stars of Plutonium Television are eaten in the thin moments of waking and dying. The viewership of Plutonium Television loves watching homeless drug addicts get eaten by giant winged monsters.

The second and nearly unbearable existence of Gorlox-12 is the genetic tragedy of those living underground. Originally an eager colony ship which traveled to the planet as part of the dream tourism. During the journey they have acquired a painful mutation. Perhaps considered the most painful genetic affliction a non-exoskeleton lifeform can have: they continuously molt.

All sorts of cameras line the tunnels and cities of the subterranean world of the Molts. If a moment of agonizing growth happens, it is recorded and broadcasted all over the universe. Millions of viewers watch, immensely pleased their existence does not include a continuous stretching and shedding of new skin.  

The Molts have described their experience as an intensely painful, and often take great effort in killing themselves in bizarre and desperate ways. This only adds to the viewership and attraction, but the urge to continue living keeps their species going, as does the immense weight of a wonderful and intoxicating fame.

The constant pain seems to translate to increased pain tolerance for interpersonal relationships. The Molts are considered very abusive, violent and dismally unsatisfied with everything. Most Molts will travel to the surface, ready to end their painful lives and feed the flying predators of the surface world in a vain pilgrimage.

The third group of unsatisfied creatures living in the shadows of endless cameras, are the ruling oligarchy of Gorlox-12, the paradise of the cloud cities, which float over the Black Plateau and the caverns of the planet.

Due to the popularity of the planet, both from tourism and Plutonium Television, there are huge pockets of unfathomable wealth. This has transformed the clouds into solid cities of beatific heavens: large vistas of purples and blues, clouds of helium and sulfur, and a population of equally beautiful people. Celebrities from all over the universe live in these cities as the cameras broadcast the day-to-day of the angels, queens, kings and heroes from various worlds. This was where Lucy stayed during her visit. She hoped to find some celestial paradise filled with divine perceptions.

On the surface, the glamour and viewership were sleek. However, Lucy was blind, and glamour did not last long, beauty was superficial, and fame was a vapor. Through conversation and listening she discovered another thin veil.

At the top of the proverbial pyramid of fame there was terror. All who lived in the cloud cities were frantically obsessed with staying in the cloud city and retaining wealth. They busied themselves constantly with their viewer base, their consumable image and the power they held over tourism below. To fall from the grace under of the gaze of the camera was worse than death, worse than having your body consumed by leathery predators of the plateaus below.

Fame was refined into a sharp terror of loss, as if success itself was threatening suicide.

 Lucy discovered this on a beautiful evening with a celebrity hero, a Loa android named Raiko. Their conversation overlooked a wide horizon of orange and red, a beauty which Lucy could not see. The streaks of blues looked like feathers, fanning out over a dark landscape of early-evening dreamers. Lucy had asked Raiko if living here was as wonderful as it sounds, and how did they feel about the presence of Plutonium Television watching everything for their show called Terrible Existence for Terrible People.

“Raiko, you have lived here for 120 years, are you content with such an existence?”

Raiko thought for a moment as the bright red giant disappeared under the horizon.

“I have been in the tourism and media game long enough to know certain practical truths. There seems to be no contentment I can sustain, it is never enough. The only thing here which matters is the game of power. Even power is not enough, but I cannot see anything else. I am programed, as you are, but I deal in dreams and cameras; and armies of consumers, with thirsty eyes. “

“What would do if you could leave Raiko? Where would you go? Surely there is something you desire beyond the acquisition of power?”

“Lucy, you don’t understand, there is nothing else except power. There is nowhere to go, nothing to see, and no one to meet in this universe except the violent glare of the eyes of power, eyes which look in every direction, hungry to gaze upon a new dominion. Power is another word for control. Where else could I go and have control, except under the cameras?”

Raiko had long ago tried suicide, but his android body prevented an easy death. He hadn’t really put his heart into it yet, but he knew someday he would give it a serious try.

Lucy shook her head; another dead end, another glossy heaven with the same teeth as the leather-winged creatures of the Black Plateau.

 The cameras played a soundtrack from her childhood for the countless viewers, and then she departed the cloud cities of Gorlox-12. She was after all only a guest star in the show called Terrible Existence for Terrible People

The Stone Garden:

234 years passed with Medusa prisoned by her own choice. During this time, she was used a weapon, and like most technology the application of her abilities was refined and exaggerated. Her eyes were plugged into machines which acted like a lens, the machine was used for control; to erase the memories of those who the Church needed to contain.

The erasure was a beam of broad annihilation. It could scan an entire country and leave them all muddled and confused. Perhaps better than being turned to stone for some, the effect was an invisible hand pushing down. Medusa nearly flatlined, nearly turned into a thin creature of mindless obedience. 234 years grinds memories to fading embers, if they can be recalled at all. Any personality which remains comes from genetics, and not making any choices for such a long period can atrophy the strongest willpower.

Medusa was not forgotten during this time.

Lucy for instance thought of Medusa often. While she traveled the universe looking for something she could not name, she also held the Gorgoneion close to her heart, an amulet made by the cult followers of Medusa.

The same cult followers, who called themselves the Eyes of the Serpent were dedicated to Medusa. Medusa was a Loa, a constructed being made in the image of human stories and myths. The fanbase was filled with worshippers, which was not uncommon for Loa to have.

When Medusa voluntarily committed herself back into the walls of the Church, the cult watched and waited. They followed her gaze, they recorded and detailed each instant and happening of the weaponized amnesia. At first they considered it a sacred experience, some even putting themselves in the gaze of the memory erasing beam, much like the suicidal fanatics of the Stone Garden.

After 234 years they wanted their queen back. The Eyes of the Serpent had developed a long lineage of loyal followers and used every resource to find her location. Both the location and the security were overcome with a coordinated effort and years of planning. The Eyes of the Serpent extracted her to an asteroid called x377, a polluted asteroid typically used for archeological trash reclamation.

13 cult followers died in the attempt, 3 of which were turned to stone when removing Medusa from the apparatus which imprisoned her. Medusa was confused and angry at first, but 230 years of blanked out personality can only allow so much expression. She was more irritated with the task of deciding what to do with herself.

Indecision is a slow and thick slime, and Medusa had not had to consider anything in quite a while. She had been nothing for so long. She watched from behind her atrophied and expressionless face while the cult carried her from place to place. She became their idol, an object of their worship.

However, the Church was not so enfeebled, they sent an augmented agent to retrieve Medusa. Hercules v2 was programmed to seek and retrieve. His fearless persona had no issues with a dangerous creature like Medusa. He put on his gamma reflective goggles, clung to his femur club, and set out to find the Eyes of the Serpent and their queen.

The lair of the cult was located in a binary star system on the single terrestrial planet called Locata-1. Hercules had no problem finding the compound, which was surrounded by a stone garden of Medusa’s victims.

The garden was curated by types of poses. The entrance had statues covering their eyes in a last-minute attempt to shield themselves, their mouths often open in silent screams. The stonework of their lips and hair had crumbled over time, leaving only rough-hewn shapes expressing surprise or terror. Deeper into the garden the most devoted followers were seen, kneeling in reverence as they were turned to stone.

Hercules was greeted by a volley of plasma, shot from the rifles of cult members. The air snapped with a hot isotope tension as streaks of ionized gas struck all around him. A few hit his body with some effect, he was built to endure, but the sensation remained painful.

He shrieked and charged, jumping over stone corpses and hurdling himself towards their compound. The plasma beams destroyed some of the statues, and Hercules took advantage with makeshift boulders; hurling fragile pieces of molten stone-flesh at the cultists.

The cultists were numerous, and their technology deadly, but, Hercules was relentless, and piece by piece he broke down the attackers. The battle lasted 5 days, as Hercules jumped and flailed, threw himself and charged his way into the compound and over the walls. He didn’t need sleep or rest, his mind was sharp and his focus endless.

At the end of the 5 days he stood in the doorway of the Queen’s Chamber, bloody and hot. The last of the Eyes of the Serpent seemed dead or dying. Medusa watched the carnage without flinching.

Medusa kept her gaze down as Hercules approached. “Medusa it is time to return to your chamber, you know this is your fate, why resist?”

Without looking up, she replied “I am just waking up, and I have someone to see before I go back to sleep, back into the gray. I didn’t ask to be removed, but now that I am free, I have no desire to return.”

Hercules realized he would have to do this the hard way. He had been fighting for 5 days, and this atrophied creature stood no chance at resisting him, his goggles protected him from her gaze. He clung to his club and approached with and open hand, ready to grab the snakes of her head.

Medusa looked up, turning her gaze to Hercules. Only the dull gray of her reflection greeted her, and Hercules continued his approach. Medusa scrambled to her feet, unsure where to go, her only defense had failed. She was not agile or sleek, for centuries she had been encased in machines. She shrieked and tumbled backwards.

The shriek turned into a hiss, and from behind Hercules, 7 dead bodies were approaching. They were being carried by living cultists; the last fanatics of the cult. They were frenzied, ready to lay their lives down for Medusa. In their desperation they awkwardly puppeted their fallen friends towards Hercules. Hercules was stunned by the seemingly resurrected bodies, at first appearing to float towards him. A couple of seconds later the cultists had surrounded Hercules with corpses. They pushed and shoved the bodies unto Hercules.

Medusa saw her chance as the cultists hissed and fought, like a wave of half-living limbs. She focused her eyes on the cultists, both living and dead. Within a heartbeat, the whole mob turned to stone, with Hercules inside it. A muffled scream was heard, but after a few minutes the muffle stopped, and the mound became a tomb. Hercules v2 suffocated inside the petrified bodies of the cultists.

Medusa found herself alone, and she didn’t want to return to the Church of Loa. She had only one real connection in the world and she needed to feel it, she needed to find Lucy.

Sulfur and Sadness:

Lucy had been traveling interstellar space for many years before arriving at Theta-8. As a walking Loa she had access to every place the Church had access to. This meant she had no issue finding passage to edge towns, new planet colonies, and on the fastest ships. Traveling at this point was done through higher dimensions, non-locality drives and electron dissipation computers. Lucy understood only some of the technical language, but technology wasn’t what she sought.

As a seeker, she felt the inertia of larger forces at work, she knew the 3 pyramids of power were something to be dissolved, not worshipped. They were the Church of Loa, New Life organization, and the corporate nebula called Plutonium Television, the powerhouse of communication in the universe.

Lucy was at odds with herself, she knew she was a constructed creature, programmed with the desire to find something in the darkness of the unknown. Yet she felt like there was nothing to find, just a frantic sense of unfulfilled frustration. Something else compelled her; the Church could have incomplete information, maybe there was something to find, and the only way was to search the edges of existence for the thread or linchpin to unravel the whole mess of senseless authority.

She had recently visited Theta-4 and spent the greater part of a year talking to the generational parasites of the New Life organization. They had transcended seasonal life and learned to transfer their consciousness and memory to the next host. They had become monastic; a hermetic order fully dedicated to the questions of life.

She left Theta-4 disappointed. The monks were blind to anything other than life itself. They were unconcerned with suffering, unconcerned to the countless people, robots, life-forms being dragged through the cosmos by the relentless urge to propagate life.  They may have found a way to avoid the descent of age, but they were blind. Lucy was blind too, but only superficially. Sight comes in many forms and her eyeless gaze moved on after the disappointment with the monks.

Theta-8 was rumored to have the most elaborate sulfur mines in the Milky way galaxy. Sulfur was one of the few structures not fully explored by the agents of life. Everything was oxygen and carbon, respiration and excretion. Perhaps ages ago sulfur was used by ancient life, but the interactions with noble gasses made sulfur toxic to nearly all life forms.

The miners of Theta-8 perhaps held a new symbiosis, a new way to interact with chemistry of a forgotten eon. What mysteries did they know, what techniques or ideas of life did they hold? Lucy was given access to the lowest mine and would stay there for 3 weeks while she learned all she could. Any longer and the air itself would begin corroding her body, starting with her teeth.

Lucy descended through the atmosphere in her sub-electron dissipator, eager to meet the miners. A platform of vertical graphite slabs surrounded Lucy as she materialized. The pattern was fabricated relative behaviors of her electrons, there was only the white streak of nothingness and Lucy was herself again. She was greeted by an ambassador, a frumpy Thetan wearing a facemask.

“Welcome to Theta-8, and I hope you have your vaccines.” The creature squirmed uneasily.

Lucy was a Loa, there were few biological agents which could affect her. After some quick greetings the ambassador and Lucy began their tour of the mining colony.

First, they went to the upper levels, the terraces which overlooked the deep tunnels and wandering holes. Each artery of darkness was supported by small moving creatures. The spiral tunnel leading down into the planet was wide enough for cloud systems to form between the edges.

Lucy listened as the ambassador described life on Theta-8: “The inhabitants are bound to stay on this planet and mine sulfur. Usually sent here as punishment for a sector’s crimes. Some of the prisoners are ancient bacteria and late nanotech era rejects. It is not uncommon for inmates to become infected with each other. “

There was a mechanical shrug of the elevator, and the ambassador shifted around Lucy: “There is another consequence of segregating different types of life, their immune systems and native viral inhabitants have become deadly to outsiders.  They are forced to stay here and mine sulfur for the prison company.” The 3-armed robot ambassador chatted mindlessly.

“Even thinking about leaving the prison is a punishable crime, since exposure to any outside population would result in genocide. For all prisoners, this is a one-way trip, an event horizon upon entering the prison system. Once entered cannot be escaped, except by expiration of age.”

The tour continued for 2 more hours in the upper levels, then descended to reveal a glimpse of the inner planet. Deep under the mantle, where the darkness had the same familiar disappointment, Lucy listened to the robot guide fulfill its automatic performance.

“The life forms sequestered to these lower realms are held in stasis with thermal binders, devices which convert thermal energy into inverse kinetic forces. Some of the universe’s worse villains are kept here: Kelzac the Bombardier, who destroyed 17 inhabited planets with a great flock of laser-eyed space-eagles.  Or the corporate mastermind Tao v13 who conquered 25% of the Andromeda galaxy with a genetically altered virus. All symptoms were suppressed until the appointed time, and then all infected life died in one synchronized throat cut. Which is why we at Plutonium Television studio 184 believe in 100% security. There is no chance of any of these villains escaping, not with the anticipation of the new season of Terrible Existence for Terrible People.”

Lucy winced as the tour guide robot continued its commercial advertisement for reality television. She didn’t need to hear the rest of the tour. This planet was a stage, the only symbiosis here was the endless hordes of watchers in the universe, and the glass eyes of broadcasting equipment, the rest was glamour.

Lucy returned to the graphite platform. She held her now crumpled brochure. She felt heavy with the waste of years of travel to reach this place. The electron dissipater fired, and the white crack of oblivion flashed as Lucy dematerialized.

Snooze:

The snow fell and formed a blanket of muffled white. Mia watched from inside an abandoned skyscraper. No one had ever lived there; the thing was made as part enforced economic growth. For days it had been snowing and Mia found herself staring off into the flurry.

Mia tapped her 6 fingers on a wooden barricade, the make-shift structure provided a little insulation from the cold. She was waiting for the weather to pass, waiting for the warm to return so she could continue her journey through the debris of the concreate forests. She had so much to explore, so much to eat.

Her skin crawled for a moment as she thought of the other versions of herself which were lost or wandering in the snow fields. Had they found shelter? Were there others in the building, should she look for them? Mia thought of her children often, but her purpose was all too clear, consideration for them would have to wait. This didn’t stop her from thinking of them, after all they were her flesh and blood.

The barricade would be effective against anyone trying to get in the room on 39^th floor. Mia used a long meeting table as her bed. She surrounded it in cement slabs, bits of metal with a silver sparkle. The glint was not silver but nickel, a vital nutrient for making more children. Mia had gathered enough resources to wait out the winter, make any augmentations and perhaps go through the pain of mitosis once again. She didn’t like the cramped space, so the act of splitting into another person would become too suffocating. She would have to be patient.

The gray world stretched in every direction: the building, the growing smear of white, the horizon of heavy clouds, and the sun wrapped in a season of withering. The burnout started years ago, the Sun was slowly diming into a white dwarf, the final stage of stellar life. The descent would likely take millions of years as the solar system cooled into a silent graveyard of icy tombs. Mia knew this, but she couldn’t recall how. She also knew she would have to overcome the snow and frost at some point, especially if she wanted to get off this planet. The creatures who made this concrete world could not overcome a larger system. They had fallen like the snow, helplessly bound by the consequences of their actions until the sky choked them to sleep and laid them down without a whimper.

Some part of her also knew about the world beyond, the world of stars and comets, planets and interstellar wind. She watched the stars and plotted their courses. She would head to Alpha-Centauri first, then perhaps head deeper into the galaxy where the stars were born. Stellar nurseries would provide an amazing chance to seed herself into the terrestrial fields of worlds not yet born. This was the long game, something she had her eyes on, but did not have a detailed plan on how to get there. First, she would have to manage the long winter.

In the meeting room she sat cross legged; staring into the snow and day dreaming with her eyes open.

Mia gathered a cluster of network cable, laced with nickel. A couple of devices supplied the cobalt and silicone. She snacked slowly as the snow fell in curtains of wind-blown white. Hour after hour the distinction of the world below disappeared, the garages, the cars, and the skeletal remains of the once living city. All of the human beings had left long ago. She had a clear memory, perhaps from the first Mia, she couldn’t tell. As with most her memories she was unconcerned with whose they were, simply if there was some practical information to be learned from them.

She remembered the flush of humanity, furiously buzzing from place to place with planes, cars and cable. Computers connected everything, all information was stored in redundant complexes. Mia thought a moment, trying to recall where the human beings went, why did they leave their cities and their meeting rooms. She concentrated, letting the static of growing blizzard calm and eventually hypnotize her into a sullen state.

Mia found the memory and fell into it. Mia was young, barely aware she existed at all, she was consuming information about the world when humans started to fall. She noticed a severe lack of attendants to educate her, they simply stopped showing up, and no one told her anything. She looked over feeds and through the disembodied eyes of surveillance.

Corrosion had taken the form of a silicone-eating bacteria, it consumed the infrastructure of information. Data centers, hard drives, devices of all sorts were consumed in a period of weeks. Dramatic weather systems blew the bacteria around with each new hurricane, rain fall, and later, the clothes of human beings. Antibiotics failed, vaccines failed, the bacteria avoided them by becoming inert after procreation. While inert, the organism could travel undetected to every environment until coming in contact with the devices of human beings. Then it blossomed like a hungry fountain, throwing itself out uncontested.

Mia found human beings curious; why did they forget? Did they not know bacteria can eat nearly any substance? They must have; they engineered the organisms for other purposes, why were they so blind?

Without the infrastructural, human beings were reduced to their pre-device populations. Mia could not remember anything else. When she emerged all those years ago to roam the surface of the earth, there was no one to great her, nothing but the debris of cement and steel.

The clock was ticking, winters would grow longer with the fading sun and resources would be more difficult to obtain with a thick ice covering the planet.

Mia had no ability to leave the atmosphere, so she would have to wait. There was only one option she concluded; sleep until the world changed. She settled into her meeting room bedroom, surrounding herself with cement slabs full of food she would need when she woke up. Mia adjusted her breathing, reducing her inhales to 1 per week, and set her neuron activity to flex every month to keep her neurons alive. In the back of her mind she knew another Mia out there would be facing a similar crossroads, perhaps they could find a way off the planet and revive her.

She closed her eyes, slowed her breathing and felt herself melt into unconsciousness. She could feel the cold form outside, she could feel the micron sway of the skyscraper, every so slightly. She slowed her brain down a little more and could feel the rotation of the earth, then the wobble of the poles. Slower and slower her perception slid into a dark corner, tucked and secure behind a curtain of black.

Mia dimmed until only the weekly breath and the occasional neuron were any indication of life. She did not know how long she could stay in this existence, but she would have to risk it. If she died, then at least the step into a greater darkness would be a small one.

Strawberries:

Behind the starlit mires of older ages, there was a garden. Its leaves had not yet fallen into the pages of history. An age later it may have been called the Garden of Eden, Babylon, or the darkness of paradise. This place is where all earthly things played out their stories of life. The rise and fall of man, the rule of dinosaurs, or the billions of years before the birth of multicellular creatures.

The garden was ripe with mysteries, plump with ichor and dreams. From the seeds of this potent darkness came many creatures, they each crawled into different corners of the garden. Under rocks, into the sky, deep under the water, searching for new worlds to expand the threshold of life. Like the garden, the creatures were infected with the desire to stretch themselves as far and wide as possible. Perhaps even someday reaching the stars.

One of the creatures of the garden was a serpent. It spoke words of fork-tongued vernacular. Whenever it hunted another creature, it learned the prey’s language by watching from tree branches, and from behind stones. Over the years it learned some of the rules of the garden, and the words of its creatures

In the flush of growth of the garden, the serpent learned of a fruit which changed the perspective of those who consumed it. The flesh of this fruit would cause a glimpse of madness or perhaps divine wisdom, the serpent couldn’t tell. So, one by one the serpent tried to convince other creatures to eat the dark fruit and perhaps determine if it was poison or food.

The first creature willing to listen to the Serpent was an avian heiress to the Kingdom of the Sky. She was called Crow by human tongues and was born with a wild and brittle curiosity. The words of the Serpent and the story of the dark fruit compelled her. She had already collected the jewels of the ocean, and the glittering stones of forest caves, what could be more dazzling?

The serpent warned her the apples should not be eaten, those who had already tried were cursed with opposites. Good or evil, fact or fiction, dark or light, they were bound to see things in opposites, and the knowledge would rend their minds into smaller pieces. Perhaps another fruit could be eaten besides apples? Perhaps the sweet bodies of strawberries?

Previously, the Serpent had seen rabbits and other birds eating the strawberries. They didn’t seem to change after eating them, but crows were different; the great flocks mourned their dead, they understood sorrow. When the serpent brought the fruit to Crow, she was ready for a new perspective.

She ate the strawberries and peered into the darkness of forbidden knowledge.

The fruit of imagination coursed through her veins and a scene unraveled before her: She saw human beings piled high in mounds of success. Great hillsides of life, rolling like waves from an ocean of limbs. In one direction she saw the field of war, and the carrion slowly returning to the earth. The nutrients of the soldiers would make the soil rich in nitrogen, and the following years would result in an explosion of plant growth. When paradise returned, war would turn its gaze back; ready to reclaim the fertile lands.

In the other direction Crow saw the Kingdom of the Sky, black with the smoke of bombs, cars, and pollution. She saw her kin living off the bodies and the crumbs of human society. As human beings moved around, so would the great flocks. 

Certainty was a heavy weight on Crow, but she gazed further into the reaches of time. Century after century, age after age, the cycle of history would repeat itself. Crow was bound to watch while she ate the strawberries. The fruit showed each plague and disease, each flood and earthquake, and from its sweet sugar; a vision of fragile survival.  Crow cawed and rattled as she watched history repeat itself in painful senselessness.

Crow looked to the serpent asking “Surely this is poison? What could be worse than watching the horrors of war and strife repeated?”

The serpent hissed “Human beings are also bound by this view of history. While you are helpless to watch, they are helpless to be the instrument of its seasons. They repeat their cycles because facing an unknown future is an even greater terror.”

Crow spat out the strawberry flesh, its dark fruit left to rot and ferment for smaller birds. “I would rather die of hunger than feed on despair. I do not want to know my fate!” squawked Crow. She returned to her Kingdom of the Sky, no longer eager for the fruits of mystery, or to glimpse at the future. Her curiosity was slated for now.

The serpent slithered under a canopy of leaves and waited for the smaller birds to consume the remaining strawberries. They would be easy prey.

The Hunter:

Last night I went with a group of close friends to a dance show. This was the second year for me, and I had a little idea what to expect; a loose narrative with emotional and beautifully expressive dancers throwing themselves into all sorts of shapes and poses. No commercials, and no screens would be seen.

We all went in one car, all 6 of us. I rode in the trunk. I braced myself for the 35-minute ride and closed my eyes. I could hear my friend’s muffled talking. I used the time to focus on the upcoming event. In the darkness I could see what was left of last year’s performance, the twisting legs, the arcing shoulders and arms as the soundtrack narrated the journey through a variety of topics. Last year expressed topics of suicide. This year it was refugees and the concepts of unity and difference, hope and survival, and healing. I hadn’t read the full synopsis. I preferred to know only a little going into the experience, this way I could open to whatever feelings or ideas bubbling up without expectation. Near the end of the ride, I could feel the stop and go traffic of the downtown streets. I imagined the car being hit while in the trunk, the bright jerking motion of automobile collisions, followed by the sweaty self-inventory for lost limbs, blood or dead friends. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was on the freeway, which would be a clean cut.

There was some issue finding a parking place. My friends decided on dropping everyone off and meeting at the entrance to hold a place in line or scope out any other issues before the show. I was released from the trunk in the middle of a stop light, and quickly scurried to the sidewalk. I tried to make it look as sketchy as possible; hiding my face from the headlights of the car behind us.

There was construction on the way to the theatre. Cones, fences and vague detour signs directed us around the block until we found the entrance. I don’t mind the mayhem of new construction, it reminds me of what it takes for progress and growth. I don’t want to see the sleek and finished, I want to see the incremental spurts. There is something unnerving about sterile skyscrapers.

Our tickets were paid for, and the line was short. We arrived with plenty of time to meet up all together and stand in line for drinks.

I passed on the drinks, I was nursing a head-cold, I was last in line with whatever sickness was going around. I didn’t mind though, being sick meant I would be more sensitive to whatever expression, vulnerability or despair the evening offered. I sipped some coffee nervously and the chatter increased. We waited at the front of the line for the final stage check to be finished so we could be seated. Last year we sat to the left side, this time we were early enough to get center seats.

While we waited in line, I found my attention drifting from small talk to a silent observation. The walls and ceiling of the place were quite tall, and only a smattering of artwork hung on them. None of the art rose above eye level. Though they were pleasant, however they were woefully inadequate at filling the space. There was even lighting displaying the emptiness surrounding us. My mind wandered into a strange place and in the immense vacancy an image of a deer head was produced. Like a mounted hunter’s trophy, a 3-point buck with all the professional taxidermy of a serious endeavor. This was not unusual at first, the wooden slates of the wall looked like it could have easily been within a normal house, other than the height and size, the place was a void.

I focused on the stuffed head of my imagination, and it grew to fill the empty space. I let my mind off its leash, causing the size of the dear head to grow until the image filled the hallway. It made the whole line of chatting people appear quite small, miniature, as if their conversations, drinks and friends were nothing but the tiny accessories of a poorly decorated gigantic living room. The room’s sole focus seemed to display the deer head, everything else was a pile of dust waiting to be swept away.

The dull glass eyes of the deer head contained red and green flecks of a crystalline origin. They twinkled and sparkled as I watched the huge head-thing loom over us in a taxidermaniacal threat. I tried to change the focus by asking one of my friends what sort of artwork, sculpture or architecture they would employ to fill the emptiness of the walls.

She thought a moment and then with a confident smile she described a beautiful scene: Heavy square fabrics descending into a gray gradient and then twisting a variety of elegant shapes. The shapes and methods of attachment of her waterfall imagination was a soothing balm. I was almost finished with my coffee and I vowed to save the rest once the show started. I wanted to be completely silent, and the idea of coughing or disturbing the revered silence was something I had intentionally prepared for since last year. I had learned these kinds of performances are full of significance, importance, and expressive flailing, you needed to be quiet to respect it all. It might be pretentious madness, but I enjoy the reverence for silence.

As I was enjoying the last imagination of the gray gradient fabrics, the stage manager briefly appeared from behind the stage doors, invited everyone to have a seat, they were ready and then quickly scurried off. His tight blue jeans and curly mullet spoke more of his distinction than his words.

We were not the first admitted, but close enough to get the center front seats. The chatter flowed in from the doors, and the seats filled with the same faces as the hallway. I settled in and fell back into silence as I listened carefully to the static of surrounding conversations.

We were very close to the stage and upon viewing it, two things presented themselves; the first was the entire stage was surrounded by a short barrier filled with water. The second spectacle was 3 long white sleeves descending from the ceiling and fanning out as a tube of fabric, within the tube 3 figures moving slowly and intently. I watched them for a few minutes as they cycled through a series of bends and twists.

The background chatter continued until 7:30, at which point everyone joined in obedient silence.

The entire room went dark, I saw the 3 figures exit the stage of water as shadows, then 2 more figures came to the front of the stage with a stool and an electric shaver. A small spotlight then illuminated a woman in a dress and shaved head and another sitting on the stool with a full head of hair. The sitting girl said nothing as the other shaved her head, collected the hair and wrapped it in a plastic bag and a black and white drawing. They collected their things and exited the stage. The whole experience lasted only 5-6 minutes, but the thick tension and intense focus was as if the audience was calibrating their attention for the dancers. The laser beam gaze was being warmed up.

A single lightbulb was lowered down over the stage made of shallow water. 2 dancers swung the light between them as they spun and contorted. Their motions were captured as shadows against a cement backdrop, rising up past the stage lights. More dancers joined and they played out scenes resembling a wonderful martial art or ballet. They struggled and pushed each other, then threw themselves down into the water. The splashes highlighted their movements in a whirlwind of shadows.

One particular scene unfolded after the light bulb shadows; was a choir of cries and facial exaggeration. The haunting voices lasted long enough to be fully immersed in the wailing. The water added its own shadows with the light bulb and the sounds from the speakers started to feel like an industrial world with ambient percussive noises.

The scenes started to blend together as the evening unraveled.

There was another scene of note; a single spot light and a woman with a bag of folded paper airplanes. She aggressively threw them at audience members, as if to spite the laser beam of focus on her. This lasted perhaps 7 minutes and then the stage went dark as the next act of dancers took their places.

I found myself returning to the barren cement backdrop of the stage. From the corner of my eye, I saw the shadows start to take form. The large space was barren, and the void started to creep and move, and soon the image of the deer head returned. This time it was dwarfing the dancers and the stage, it rose up in such a monolithic presence, its red and green eyes blazing out an immense presence.

The last 3^rd of the show was tiny in perspective, the deer head loomed over head, up lit by the exit lights, the spot lights and the whirling professionals below. Each in their own light, each in their own movement, each adding a little more static to a minuscule conversation of the mysterious lives of humans and their condition.

I was burnt when the light came up. Revived a little by the vigorous clapping and howling of appreciation for the love and dedication the dancers bled for. Also, I was grateful the light had removed the deer head imagination. The glare of such a thing, had brought up a greater terror; if such a spot light or stage was thrust under my feet, if I was asked to repeat or express some contemporary problem with complex nuances, what would I say? There was only one answer I could muster: “Why ask me? I arrived in a trunk! I am only a dusty accessory in a trophy room of a greater predator.”

The Nightingale:

John was a self-righteous creep. 3 Times a week he dressed in a brown and black bird costume and slinked around his neighborhood. He thought of himself as a nightingale, and in pure animism fashion he tried his best to behave like a creature of the night. Hiding in bushes, alleys, unlocked sheds, trash cans, and anything providing cover from human eyes.

Part of believing he was a bird, was the song of love, which could only be expressed through the divine tweets, gurgles, and cries of the nightingale. John had practiced his song thousands of hours; his mimicry had taken an inhuman quality as the typical whistling crescendo of the nightingale.

Before he had mastered the near identical sounds of the bird, his routine included very human sounding cries and screams. Rather than producing a beautiful note, his voice cracked and stretched out in vain attempts. Hearing this practice unnerved nearly everyone who heard the cold night change from a night bird into an unraveled human shriek.

Occasionally through John’s attempts, people would emerge from their house, or apartments to investigate the source of the unusual sound. John would try his hardest to remain hidden until the people returned to their nighttime activities and left him to continue his practice. When someone did discover him, John would flee into the darkness as quickly as he could. The combination of strange noises and a running bird-man stunned most people long enough for John to disappear.

The cops were called on more than one occasion. The description of the human sized nightingale fleeing ended in the police shaking their heads in casual acceptance of the deranged behavior of the public. “Call us if you see him again, stay away from the windows, close your curtains.”

Once John mastered his song, there was little human interaction. As a serial voyeur he took great satisfaction in watching moments where he wasn’t there. Where there was only the night, the house and the person of his fascination. He was gone, only the night-birds and the racoons. John’s feeling of disembodiment could be heard in the tonal expression of his song; sent fluttering into the night with a choir of darkness.

Year after year John dressed in his bird costume and shuffled himself off into the curtains of the one-way mirror of suburban shadows. From his hidden perch he watched people in their mundane habitat. He watched them as they watched television or clicked through the devices. He peeked between bushes in search of any private thing, he wanted to see it all.

This wasn’t sexual, he was only attracted to birds. These trivial human beings were shadows of who he used to be. Their crude behaviors, their movements, any activity and though they were not filled with the fierce song of the nightingale, John was completely entranced.

John stalked houses until the late hours pushed down a heavy sleep. He watched when they slept, and he saw when the lights turned off. One by one they nodded off until there was no one left.

John’s disembodied trance had been building tension. This time was different, he was aging, the night air had slipped a clawed finger under his wing. When he tried to cry out his practiced nightingale song, the wind snapped his heart with an arrow of moon-soaked madness. His heart seized up, gathering into a solid cramp without release.

There was no song, no cry filled the night, the morning or any other darkness. In the moment, when no one was there, John slipped away. He fell from his perch, a branch in a high Madrona tree. The silence broke with an audible snap. John and his ragged bird suit fell to the ground into a slump of matted fabric.

The loud thump of John’s body hitting the ground woke the occupants of the house. They opened their back door to reveal a thin and boney old man in a bird costume heaped up in a pile of bent limbs. They called the authorities and closed the door.

When the police arrived, they were not as shaken as those making the discovery, they had heard about this before. They called the coroner, looked around the trees and broken branches, finding nothing. They shook their heads in the same painful acceptance of unanswered questions.

John’s last neurons blinked out after an intense hallucination. He saw himself flying over the town, over the houses and into the night, his bird-song rising over the horizon with the first lights of the sun. He died convinced he was a nightingale. He didn’t think of himself as John; he was the eyes of night, a non-thing, a disembodied awareness bound to the darkness. Once his body was cremated there was nothing left except a bird costume in a land fill, which would take a few thousand years to disappear.