by P P Corcoran
- THE END -
About Jason JASON J. McCuiston
Jason J. McCuiston was born in the wilds of southeast Tennessee, where he was raised on a carnivorous diet of old monster movies, westerns, comic books, horror magazines, sci-fi and fantasy novels, and, of course, Dungeons & Dragons. He attended the finest state school that would have him with the intention of becoming a comic-book artist. Following his matriculation and a whirlwind tour of spectacularly underpaid and uninspired career paths, he finally realized that he was meant to be a professional storyteller.
Jason has been a semi-finalist in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest, with stories published by Parsec Ink, Pole to Pole Publishing, Left Hand Publishers, Spring Song Press, StoryHack Magazine, Crimson Streets, Tell-Tale Press, and SERIAL Magazine. Other tales are forthcoming.
He lives in South Carolina, USA with his college-professor wife (making him a Doctor’s Companion) and their two four-legged children. He can be found Facebook and he occasionally tweets about his dogs, his stories, his likes, and his gripes.
Connect with Jason here:
www.castrumpress.com/authors/jason-j-mccuiston
Where All Memories Are One
By Leigh Saunders
How to convey so a human mind can understand, the memories of an entire warren that I hold in my own? Memories that are mine as much as if I had scuttled in fear every dark passage, felt every blow on my own carapace, writhed in the agony of the flames as my thorax blistered from the heat of the bounty hunters’ weapons.
Memories that are my burden to bear, as a Queen of the Callibrini – for I am Y’reui, the Queen who sacrificed her warren to save her human friends, the Synths.
#
I see through the eyes of Satish, my eyes whirring in and out of focus at the strange creatures I will later come to know as humans, crossing the field of ripening amaranth toward me for the first time. I am not alone in my observations – around us, the wedge-shaped heads of dozens of my warren-brothers, in shades of gold (like my own) and glossy black and speckled green and brown, have risen above the gently waving clusters of purple flowers, pairs of multifaceted eyes whirring as they follow the strangers’ progress through the field.
Only the presence of the small, brown, warren-brother of the serving-caste guiding the humans toward me prevents us all from driving them immediately from our fields – we know not who the strangers are or why they have come, but the brown’s chittering tells us that they have not come as intruders.
I watch them approach with great curiosity. They walk upright, as do I, but on two legs as opposed to my four, and the limbs of their upper body swing forward and back aimlessly as they move, and lack the hard-shell casing and sharp, spiny ridge that gives my own forelimbs strength. They emit strange sounds from their flat faces as they approach, though my own chittering is likely as unintelligible to them.
I see as they grow closer that the humans have wrapped their bodies in close-fitting fabrics in a deep shade of blue, not unlike the color of my warren’s Senior Queen. They bear patterns on the chest and forearms that are like those I have seen other cloth-wrapping races use to indicate their status among their peers. I rise to my full height – the humans are easily twice my size, but the elaborate etchings on the golden, chitinous shell of my abdomen and thorax proclaim me also to be of high esteem in my warren. With a click of my mandibles, I could instantly summon a hundred of my warren-brothers to my side. I have no fear of the humans.
The brown skitters up to me, and I dip my head toward him and brush my slim, segmented antennae against his, an exchange of memory that conveys more than just the knowledge of his current task. He has brought the humans to my field at the behest of the Queens of our warren. The brown’s knowledge and memories are now mine, and mine his; other interactions will share them with more of our brothers, strengthening the bonds of our warren.
The humans do not experience the chemical memory, keeping their thoughts bound tightly within their own skulls. As they have not understood my initial greeting, I address them in the language called “Standard” that is used to connect the races of the Hundred Worlds. The words come awkwardly to my mandibles but serve their purpose.
“I bid you greeting,” I say.
The humans stop a short distance away, and one of them answers, also in the common speech. “We come in peace.”
#
The memory of greeting the humans as satish is mine, dozens other first greetings - all new, yet old, meeting them for time and fiftieth in same thought. Such nature a callibrini’s understanding, where memories are one.
As myself, as Y’reui, I knew of the humans who were called “Synths” from the memories shared with me by the senior Queens, and they from memories shared by the Queens of other warrens who had shed their shells many times over.
But for the century’s worth of memories I had of the Synths and their lonely sojourn amid the Hundred Worlds, exiled from their homeworld, I was a newly-made Queen, the youngest of the five who governed our warren, when I first saw them with my own eyes.
They had come to our warren and been brought before the Queen’s Council. The Great Cavern, where such audiences were held, was a vast hollow carved out of the earth hundreds of cycles before I was birthed, with massive stone pillars to support the labyrinth of the warren above. I loved this space, deep below the surface where only the phosphorescence of certain plants cast their light and the air was cool and moist.
A vast crowd of the warren-brothers had gathered to hear our judgment, a sea of shells in black and brown and gold and green filling the chamber. Their excited chittering echoed from the rocky formations suspended from the ceiling, for our warren was small and visitors were few, and these five Synths – two male and three females – had come bearing gifts.
As the Synths were led up onto the smooth stone of the dais where we received them, they placed large woven baskets of fruits and vegetables – delicacies from distant planets – on the floor in front of them. The sweet, heady smell of the ripe fruit wafting toward us from the baskets was intoxicating, and I found myself salivating in anticipation of biting into the luscious flesh and slurping down the syrupy juices.
“What do you seek in our warren?” asked Val’en, her voice reminding me that our duty was to address the larger matter at hand. She was the Senior Queen of our Council and towered above the rest of us – and above the Synths as well – tall and blue, the great, feathery fronds of her antennae folded over her back like wings.
“We wish to learn more about your people,” said the leader of their group, a male who called himself Elliot Gar.
I felt a shiver of excitement at his words. I had many questions I wished to ask them.
Would I have encouraged my sister-Queens to allow the humans to stay with us, to study our ways and we theirs, had I known where it would lead? I cannot say for certain.
But given my part in the events that followed, I suspect I would have done no differently.
#
For three full changes of the seasons, the Synths dwelt among us, making their nests above ground in a small cluster of perma-shelter domes of their own construction, and spending their time scattered among the warren-brothers according to the interests of their research.
The male called Elliot Gar spent most of his time in the fields with the large, green-and-brown-shelled warren-brothers of the cultivator caste, learning from them about our agricultural crops and farming practices.
Two others, a male called Loren Kol and a female by the name of Kara Jem, were fascinated by our species’ chemical memory. They hoped to discover the key to decoding the memory molecules by which we shared information with the touch of our antennae. A pack of the small, green, courier caste warren-brothers clustered around them, constantly running in and out of their permashelter dome, their chittering interspersed with whispery-soft Standard.
The two remaining females, Jessica Lim and Brianna Rei, wanted to learn more about our histor
y and culture, and how they could, as they said, “interact more productively with us.” They met often with Satish and other gold warren-brothers of the intellectual caste, first in the permashelter domes on the surface, but later coming into the upper levels of the warren more and more often.
I, of course, never ventured out of the warren, but received regular knowledge of the above-ground activities passed through the chemical memory from one warren-brother to another until they reached me and became my own. However, being still a young Queen, and small enough to move easily throughout the warren, unlike my older, larger, sister-Queens, I came frequently to the dwellings of the golds, and spent many cycles in conversation with Jessica and Brianna.
It was during these conversations, while we sat on large cushions and sipped at the clear water or sweet nectars provided by our gold-shelled hosts, that I came to consider these intriguing and curious Synth females my sister-friends.
“Why did you come to our warren?” I asked during one of these meetings. Satish had invited us to his warren and was a most gracious host, providing an abundance of phosphorescent plants to light the chamber for our human guests and dishes of freshly-picked fruits and vegetables for us to nibble on.
“Surely a warren near one of the above-ground cities would have provided food and dwellings more suited to your species than your rations and perma-shelters,” I continued. “There are many warrens that are well-accustomed to travelers of other races and do much commerce with them. Why come to us?”
“We were looking for a warren that was not heavily engaged with off-worlders,” replied Brianna. “One that had not been influenced as greatly by other races and would offer us a better understanding of your peoples’ true culture.”
“And have you found what you sought.”
“Yes,” she replied, and Jessica nodded in agreement. “We are grateful for the welcome we have been given and the knowledge that you and the warren-brothers have shared with us.”
My curiosity on that subject satisfied, I nodded, then ventured into a new topic, but one that had long intrigued me. “I know you were driven from your homeworld,” I said, “but I do not know why.”
“We are different from other humans,” Jessica said simply, setting aside her empty cup and raising a hand to forestall Satish from refilling it. “They fear us.”
I had come to recognize the shifts in skin coloring and temperature when the humans found themselves talking about difficult topics – sometime only a subtle warming, sometimes turning their pale skin an unusual, rosy hue – and saw none of this in Jessica. Nor was there any undercurrent of hesitation, of the need to choose her words carefully, in her straightforward reply. I turned my gaze on Brianna, and found that she, too, was nodding in silent agreement.
“In what ways are you different?” I asked. “Are you larger or stronger than the others, like the black-shelled warrior-caste brothers of the Callibrini? Or cleverer, like our gold-shelled brothers of the intellectual caste?”
Brianna laughed, a sound I had found jarring when I first heard it, until coming to understand that it was akin to the enthusiastic clicking of mandibles when the warren-brothers were amused by some turn of events.
“To outward appearances, a Synth is no different than any other human,” she said. “And the castes humans create are divided less rigidly along differences in our gender or appearance and more often by our social standing or philosophical beliefs or choice of profession – and even those are not strict divisions among our people.” She paused, setting aside a still heavily-laden plate. “But we Synths were birthed in laboratories, with technology integrated into our brains and genetic differences that grant us lifespans many times that of normal humans. These are the things they fear.”
“And now they hunt us,” added Jessica. “Once there were many Synths; now only a few dozen remain, and we have scattered ourselves throughout the Hundred Worlds in an attempt to survive.”
My sister-friends had given me much to consider, and I silently rose from my cushion and moved toward the door, barely taking note of Satish’s nod of deference as I passed. Before I left, I turned toward the two Synths, studying them with every facet of my vision.
“I give you my word,” I said, “no harm will come to you or your companions while you are guests of this warren.”
Would that my words had been true.
#
Elliot Gar was the first of the Synths to die.
I remember the warm summer afternoon through the eyes of Hilal, one of the large, brown-and-green speckled warren-brothers of the cultivator caste. Elliot and I were in the amaranth fields with dozens of the cultivator warren-brothers, tending to the crops as we did every day when a blocky-shaped, unfamiliar shuttle flew in from the west and abruptly landed in the field, crushing precious crops beneath its weight.
“Run,” Elliot said to me, his voice urgent. “Tell your warren-brothers to run. Now.” His smell had changed from one of salty sweat and hard labor to the sharp bitterness of adrenaline, and the hand that rested on my speckled carapace trembled ever-so-slightly.
He recognized the markings on this shuttle, that much was obvious, but I did not waste time asking questions. My warren-brothers and I feared nothing on our world, but Elliot was our brother-friend and we trusted him – and he said we were in danger.
I quickly chittered out the warning, rising to my full height to extend the folded layers of my upper thorax to reveal the bright red and yellow markings displayed only in times of threat. As Elliot shouted beside me, I repeated my warning again and again as loud as I could over the sound of the shuttle’s growling engines, waving my forearms to catch the attention of those of my warren-brothers who stood there staring, mesmerized as I had been by the strange vehicle.
At last the warren-brothers heard us and began to flee – myself and Elliot following them as the shuttle’s ramp descended. As I ran, I looked back several times, snatching glimpses: a large party of humans running down the ramp... lifting large-barreled weapons to their shoulders... firing, a series of deep, throaty ‘pops’ of sound that reverberated across the field. I felt the vibration in my antennae, heard the thud of projectiles impacting in the ground around me, the crack of carapaces as warren-brothers were struck and fell mid-stride.
Then Elliot was struck, one of the projectiles hitting him in the back and exploding through his chest in a splatter of hot, wet blood. My steps faltered as he fell against me and slid to the ground.
Before I had a chance to react, hot metal pierced my carapace, driving me into the ground. I gasped for air... struggled to stand... and then my memories that came from Hilal faded into pain and darkness.
#
I am tens of hundreds of black-shelled warriors, pouring from the warren to rescue our dying cultivators and defend the crops that sustain our warren.
We are solid and strong, and march toward the invaders with pincers extended, surrounding them like a deadly, living wall. For a moment, we stand there, staring at each other, our antennae waving, the late afternoon sun reflecting off our glossy black carapaces in hints of blue and green and gold.
“Give us the Synths!” one of the humans shouts, speaking in the common language they call Standard, “and we will leave you in peace!”
But we have found the murdered shell of Eliot Gar, the Synth who had become our warren-brother, lying amid the fallen cultivators, and we do not believe the invaders.
“We will not give up our own!” we reply, the whisper from our collective throats like the rush of wind across the trampled amaranth field. We snap our mandibles and click our pincers in a show of force.
They fire into our numbers with their projectile weapons, thinking to kill us as easily as they killed our cultivator warren-brothers, but our shells are stronger, and we stand there, unharmed.
The humans put away their weapons, and first we think they are afraid – as they should be, for we are hundreds and they mere dozens.
Then several of them step forwa
rd carrying strange objects we do not understand, and begin hurling huge, blazing orbs into our midst, which splatter off our shells in a spray of oil and set fire to the broken amaranth beneath us.
Again, and again they rain fire down on us, and while our carapaces are impervious to the flames, our underbellies are not so heavily protected and the longer we stand in the burning field, the more we begin to feel the effect of the heat. But we do not give ground.
We cannot. For if we falter, the invaders will have access to our warren, to our Synth warren-brother and sisters, and to our Queens, and that we cannot – we will not – allow.
So, we advance, moving forward, legs soaked in the flaming, oily substance, thoraxes smoldering, bubbling in the heat, the sickly-sweet smell of scorched chitin soon tainting the smoke-filled air.
Many of us fall long before we reach the humans, but we do not stop. They retreat, wisely staying just out of reach of our pincers, then advance again, dealing out more of the fiery oil, roasting legions of us in our shells. The battle continues thus, a slow push-and-pull of shadowy figures moving forward and back through the smoky haze, inching ever closer to the mouth of the warren.
#
I am a score of golds , the intellectual caste of our warren, who think beyond instinct to guide the lesser caste-members and provide counsel to the Queens. One of our number fell with the cultivators, another was lost with the great army of blacks, and the memories that have come to us from the few who survived those encounters has left us silent and fearful.
The sun has slid through the sky slowly on this day, but it now hangs heavy on the horizon, casting long shadows through the smoke-filled sky into the single remaining entrance to the warren. We have collapsed the other entrances, and now wait in the shadows, clinging to the ceiling, caked mud covering our golden shells to obscure us from sight until we jump down onto our enemies.