Snow Over Utopia

by Rudolfo A. Serna

  She saw the Tree, its flesh pulsing and seething, rooted into the rocks underground. It had its own sun. It did not need light from above. It gave light to its own world beneath the foundations of Utopia.

  The visions fluctuated, interrupted by memories and thoughts. Her spirit caught up in the stream with Witch Mother, a living program, a master ghost haunting the Earth Machine, transmitted by the Juggernaut tree.

  Stop, she thought she heard herself say.

  The rotors working full speed. Glowing brightly.

  The vision was blurry at first, and Eden was unable to focus on what leapt from the trees—shadows moving with the hunters’ stealth, blades unsheathed, ready for the hunt. A moon broke free from the clouds, and, in the mixed light of fire and the lunar glow, the first throat was slashed.

  The Chief Disciple unleashed his sister mistress. She bore a dagger in each green hand and slashed at those counterattacking.

  Eden saw the cat-eyed hunters, slashing at their enemies through the ash and smoke of their fires.

  The Chief Disciple’s green mistress emitting deep wrenching sounds, announcing her displeasure. The Chief Disciple swinging his truncheon into a volley of arrows, lunging head first, his horns goring. The green disciples’ claws striking, while their fangs gnashing and grinding, trying to destroy one another amid the ruins of ancient states—and Eden witnessed the killings, floating in the stream.

  The winding rotor thumped faster—the images of slaughter cutting in and out. Eden could feel both the hunters and disciples, their need to kill—she could see the stream, the leaping bodies butchering their enemies.

  She felt the misery of all those being slaughtered on both sides.

  The face she had kissed, now smeared with blood and gore, horrified Eden. She watched her lover tear at the throats of raving disciples, her animal eyes staring with hatred into a dirge of spit and fury, ripping through flesh. Eden could not tell killer from killer.

  She heard her own voice again saying: Stop!

  The killing would never end, and Eden did not want to watch anymore. She tried closing her eyes, but could not, because she had none, and she heard herself: Stop! Stop! Stop!

  In the necro-stream, getting further away from the killing, the savage packs dying at the foot of the caves. She could still feel the pain and suffering of those bleeding to death in the dirt and pine needles.

  Eden thought of Delilah’s promise to take her to Utopia, feeling no shock or pain—there was no body, there were no eyes, yet she could see everything.

  “The body would not have made it,” the Librarian said.

  “I know.”

  Delilah’s face blackened with the blood of her enemy.

  “She is brave,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Eden’s dead body rested on the steel frame of the gurney, the rotor flashing above her at full speed.

  Delilah kissed her. “Where is she now?” she asked, holding back her tears.

  “At the edge of the ocean,” the Librarian said.

  The rotor spinning over them, emanating green spark.

  “She will be in the data stream until the world is finally consumed by the sun,” the Librarian said.

  “That is good,” Delilah said, touching the dead face.

  “Yes.” The Librarian turned to the dark corners of the library.

  “I will miss her till then,” Delilah said.

  “You will see her again.”

  “In the machine,” she said.

  “Yes, in the machine.”

  The rotor spun, uploading Eden’s transmissions.

  “Father? Are you sure you never see my mother?”

  Delilah still hoped to see her again. She still believed that her father visited her somewhere in the mainframe of Witch Mother.

  “No.”

  The Librarian remembered when she was a child, asking him the same question.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” the Librarian said.

  “I still wish I could see her someday.”

  “Yes. I know. Me, too, child.” A tear falling from his empty socket behind the black glass. All three bearings rotating over Eden, and the Librarian lost his sight, seeing only flashes of the girl’s bandaged face, the transmissions cutting in and out as the power of the rotor focused on the dead young woman.

  “I will see Eden again, though, won’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is good.”

  Nine

  Miner lay at the bottom of a hole, the tiny, sharp teeth gnawing at his hand. He reached for a handful of dirt and threw it at whatever was nibbling his skin, causing the predator to scurry further back into the corner. Insatiable mouths that flicked their tongues and smelled the ground around him. Miner comforted himself by thinking that, if he just stayed in the hole, he might be able to disappear. It was quiet there, except for the flesh eaters with teeth and claws circling at his feet, waiting to pick him apart. Scooping up another handful of dirt and throwing it, he could hear them scampering back into the shallows of the hole.

  Then he remembered: You will take her to Utopia.

  But there was no Eden, no Utopia.

  Seeing the morning sky brighten above the hole, Miner’s numbness gave way, and he started feeling his broken leg and the gashes to his head and arms.

  Dirt fell in from the ledges above. He looked up and saw the small child with golden hair and blue eyes at the edge staring down at him.

  “Get up!” the child said, before disappearing from the edge, smiling.

  He pulled himself up, trying to move his broken leg. The rim of the hole was not far, but the broken leg made it almost impossible to climb. Miner looked down and saw the light reflecting off an object that was round and flat in the moist ground. He dug at it with his good arm. It was a coin, larger and heavier than the coins he once dropped into the palms of prostitutes and whiskey peddlers.

  Miner could not fully make out the insignia on the face of the coin. It resembled the coins of the company town, except it was of higher quality. It wasn’t roughly pressed and uneven, but perfect, round and precise.

  “Get up,” the little voice said.

  Blood dripped from Miner’s forehead—further clouding what little sight was left to him. He looked up in time to see the blue eyes staring at him again, the eyes of Eden—not in a jar, but set deep within the child’s face. Miner’s labored breaths echoed in the chasm, and the face of the child was doing something he couldn’t remember ever seeing—it smiled.

  “Come on, get up,” the child said, before disappearing again from the rim of the hole. Grabbing at a nearby stone embedded in the dirt wall, pulling himself up. Feeling for holds, he began climbing towards the opening.

  Emerging from the hole, he looked for the child, trying to see through the glare of the rising sun. Blood dripping into his eyes, he struggled to pull the rest of his body out, grasping at the tufts of wild grass, hoping that the roots would not break, knowing that if he fell back, he would be lost to the pernicious brood inside.

  Only one of his arms completely worked, the other was barely able to grab at the grass and roots, pulling himself up. His chest heaving, he looked for the small face. But the small face he found was among many—the sentinels watching him, their long yellow hair down past their shoulders, some of the faces were distinctively female, while others were bearded males, all aged like the weather-beaten leather stitched into company fatigues. .

  Eden? He thought—it could not be.

  They wore animal hides fashioned into boots, and heavy clothes that draped their bodies, protecting them against the cold expanse of the desert plains. He recognized the green ore tipping the spears that stood upright at the ready. They quietly watched him pulling at his ruined leg, motionless except for their hair, swaying in the wind-blown smoke rolling through the sparse woods of dead and dying trees at the end of the fissured land.

  Miner wiped the blood from his eyes, and crawled closer stumbling, then raising his he
ad, staring at the pale skin behind their thick hair. They were paler than anyone he had ever seen, unlike the brown-skinned, dark-eyed company stock. Even Eden, despite the light hair and blue eyes, she still had traces of the company imprint. They resembled a distinct breed, not of the mines or company town, but wild and feral instead.

  Miner’s vision burned from the sweat and blood and the brilliant sunlight. He squinted to see the sentinels where they stood against the rising sun, keeping the tips of their spears pointing to the morning sky. Miner’s leg kept him from standing upright. He steadied himself with his hand resting on the ground, muddied by his own blood. In the drifting mist, he could see the tip of a structure set between the sparse woods in a morning sun rising out of the desert, shining like the silver coin still in the folds of his shirt.

  A temple, he thought.

  The sentinels parted, and Miner stumbled between them, drawn by the animal skulls mounted along the tent’s wall—antlers and death grins of bones hanging over the parted flaps. A green light flashed from a slit in the temple’s walls, made of a glittering dark fiber. Miner searched for the child’s face that had stared down on him from the hole with blue eyes in the gazes of those hidden in the morning. He felt the burning wounds to his body, dragging the leg that did not work well. The green light drawing him closer, whispers calling out from the bones.

  The child was gone.

  Pushing himself along the ground, he managed to stand with his one good arm barely holding him from collapsing, focusing his strength on the pull of the grinning skulls and bleached human heads that made up the ivory menagerie. He thought that, perhaps, the child had retreated into the pyramidal structure. Struggling to look up at the sky, hearing the cawing of birds and the mountain winds ruffling the folds of the opened tent. And the voices of the mutantoid priests in the cave, trying to establish control.

  —Unable to—connect—

  The mutantoids fed the black supplement, sent it flowing through tubing to the suckling infants. The transmissions from mutantoid towers agitated the receptors in the brains of the company stock with their targeted frequency, trying to connect to the viewing, wanting to feel the sensations. The continuum hungered for more, but they were thwarted, unable to see, to hear, or feel Miner’s thoughts, which were being blocked by some force unknown to them. His creators trying to reestablish control.

  —Lost connection—

  Miner approached the temple. A large, horned skull hung over the tent opening of an animal unknown to him; the green light flashing fast from within.

  When he entered, the green strobe stopped. It was dark, except for a narrow bit of sunlight streaming in through the top, where the smoke escaped.

  He saw a girl, her skin brown, sitting cross-legged beside a small fire that flickered and crackled, holding something in her arms. The face of the girl did not look like those he had stumbled past outside. Her dark face was of a familiar race, a race more like his own. A face with high cheekbones above a slender neck, her hair, straight and black, falling over her shoulders and down her back, the necklace of green stone falling between her naked breasts. A silver band held her hair back from her thin brown face. A child suckled from her teat, the milk glistening at the edges of the parasitic lips. Drops of milk rolled off the mother’s breast like blood from Miner’s wounds. Miner could not have known what the glistening liquid was, only that the newborn human thirsted for it. He had never seen an infant before, drinking its fill undisturbed. Miner watched it feed, so small and fragile.

  “What is it?” Miner said, motioning with his hand.

  “A baby.”

  “I have never seen one.”

  “It’s you.”

  “Me?” His legs could not hold him up anymore, and he sat across from her beside the fire, staring through the smoke. “Did I die?”

  “Did you?” She asked.

  “Where are we?” Miner asked.

  “My mother’s temple.”

  Miner sank further down on the animal hide, feeling the broken bones shifting in his leg.

  “It is time,” the nursing mother said.

  “Time?”

  “To stop the war,” she said, looking down at the infant in her arms.

  “War?”

  Miner watched the infant in her lap, breathed in the smoke. He thought about the meaning of the word, war, and couldn’t understand what she meant by it. It was a word he had never heard.

  “War,” Miner muttered.

  “Did you bring the coin?”

  He took the coin from the torn shreds of his shirt. He examined it more closely this time, saw the insignia of a pyramid, an eye within its pinnacle. He placed it in front of her as an offering.

  She reached over and took it and raised it to her forehead. Removing her hand, the coin gleamed a green pulsing glow just beneath the silver band. The light strobing from its center. He heard a whispering heart, thought that maybe it was hers or the infant’s. But it was the eye that pulsed and sang, its light piercing, moving further inside of him, thumping and beaming with the green light.

  Smoke from the fire rose in wisps of blue and gray.

  She lifted a bowl made from a human skull, a green mist spinning at its rim.

  “Take it,” the nursing mother said, holding the skull out to him with one hand. He took the skull, unconcerned about the third eye’s transmissions

  —arbol de vida, seis, seis, seis—

  “Drink,” the nursing mother said.

  She smiled at him and nodded, then looked back down at the nursing infant that she gently rocked.

  He heard the whispering machine, and it was familiar to him, as if he had heard it before. From across the fire, he watched the strobing eye shining brightly.

  He brought the bowl to his lips, drank without fear. The pain subsided with the absinth scent of the liquid. Feeling the calm rushing in, Miner rested on the animal skins spread out across the floor of the tent. Once the potion took hold, the pulsing green eye’s whispers took over.

  When the skull bowl got too heavy for his one good arm, he put it down and stared deeper at the eye emanating its green-laser strobe.

  The baby suckled, unwilling to give up the sustenance it was draining from its host. The green light flashed, consuming the dark tilt of the temple, and the baby fed, fluid dripping from its lips.

  From somewhere above them, the rotor continued whispering.

  Part Three

  Ten

  The steamboat slid across the sea under dark clouds, churning against the ocean, expelling green smoke from its stacks high above the brine. The thumping heartbeat of the engine chugged, and the ship maneuvered closer to shore with the water lapping over Eden’s toes. She looked down to the glimmering sea that washed over her feet. Reaching out, she bent towards the ocean waves; pulling her hand from the water, she smelled life, tasting the salt on her fingertips—the smell was familiar to her, experienced before in communion with Witch Mother.

  She saw the rowboat coming from the steamship anchored in the distance. There was a sailor rowing the small craft towards her, wearing a white shirt and cap. The rowboat carried on a final crest of an exploding wave that settled onto the beach.

  “Hello!” The sailor called out to her. “Hello, were you waiting long?” The sailor sounded out again, jumping from the rowboat, pulling it from the water.

  “I don’t know—I think,” Eden said.

  “Sorry we are late. A storm delayed us. Were you caught in it?”

  “—I can’t remember.”

  “Quite the storm. See those clouds?” The sailor pointed to the horizon at the black clouds that flashed and rumbled, the strands of blond hair sticking out from below the crown of his hat, the visor over bright blue eyes that she had only ever seen in her own reflection.

  He stepped through the sand where the tall gray waves rolled onto the shore, and the spray blew across her face and shoulders.

  “Are you ready?” He asked.

  “I don’t know—I
…”

  “There is nothing to be afraid of. The Rotor is a strong ship. It will take you all the way to Utopia,” he said, pointing to it out at sea.

  “Utopia?” Eden said.

  “You were on your way there, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “We should go.” He extended a hand out to her, and she moved toward the rowboat with the hem of her gown trailing in the froth of the shore.

  “We must keep out of the storm,” the sailor said.

  He helped Eden onto the rowboat, and she looked again at the clouds, which continued to swirl, and the steamship puffing green smoke from its pipes, waiting for its shipman to return with the girl on board bound for Utopia. She sat in the small wooden boat as he pushed off the beach. Jumping in, he took the oars and started to row, bobbing on the waves, driving the boat further out to sea.

  Eden looked inland at the mountains and forests that she could not clearly remember ever crossing, only knowing that she was leaving behind the land from which she came. An impression of a journey, as if all that ever existed was the gray shore and the ocean that surrounded her, with the sailor rowing them both closer to the steamship that held fast with its furnace belching the green smoke through its stacks.

  “Is it waiting for me?” Eden asked.

  “Yes, just for you,” the sailor said.

  Continuing to row, he smiled, his back bending and straightening with every pull. Sailing with the foam, rising and falling with the waves, approaching the ship until the small rowboat bumped against the ship’s hull. Eden reached out for the rungs of a rope ladder hanging over the edge. Grabbing the rungs, she began to climb to the deck with the help of the sailor holding her from behind.

  “There you go,” he said.

  She turned to look at the sailor, who had lifted her up, expecting to see the light skinned face with blue eyes, a face almost like hers, except he was gone and the rowboat that had carried her from the beach was empty, floating out abandoned to the rough sea, drifting on waves that carried it further away until it was lost on a shimmering surface, with sea birds gathering above it, swooping and lifting with the clouds and tides.