Their ship would take them to the Nighttime World.
Programmed by their communal mainframe, in the endless purple light of the catacomb, they dreamed the same dream.
The dream started with the temples and fires, the drapes of the demon queen’s bed, its folds curving down toward the erect cock of her demon lover. The queen laughing before slashing her lover’s neck, drinking from the crystal chalice on the screen …
Midnight Queen.
We are losing our reason.
The Midnight Queen does not exist.
But there she is.
Glorious.
Beautiful.
On screens, crowds danced around bonfires at the foot of the temples. Writhing in frenzy, the supernatural brethren beamed messages deep from outer space. Purple electron bolts fired from the core of a gold machine. Levers flipped, lights flashed, sparks rained down from the muzzle of antennae.
They consume blood like us.
They look like us.
They are us.
Nighttime World.
For the Juggernaut.
For the Juggernaut.
They had been receiving a message from somewhere out in the galaxy since before the Baron infected their thoughts. They’d received the symbols—they would run the numbers—try to explain the words that only an ancient poet could understand.
Arbol de vida, sies, Arbol de Vida, seis, seis, seis—
The mutantoids were being readied to leave their catacombs and the planet of their birth, navigating their way to the creator among the stars, powered by the purple energy in the shrines that would be carried onboard by their ministerial handlers, placed carefully into cradles wired to the engine room of the silver ship. Deep in the underground hangers of the caves, the ship was even now being fitted with rockets—assembly lines and foundries creating the dials and controls that would be used by the mutantoid pilots.
Labor shackled and whipped, bombarded with purple light and radiation until they needed medication to keep them from rotting alive. The pills were distributed at the end of each shift to keep the shit and vomit from overfilling the drains. Old fusion still made them sick, but the black-mass in their shrines would fire the engines needed to leave their mother world.
The silver ship would carry the mutantoids to the origin of the cosmic transmission, the mysterious signal that repeated its message over and over in a jumble of letters and numbers, spinning seemingly random until they formed a pattern.
Machines in the tombs kept receiving a message that simply read: Arbol de Vida, seis, seis, seis—Arbol de Vida, sies, seis, seis—
The origin unknown.
The cryptic message must have traveled in circles around the galaxy. The Baron’s vision had given an explanation to the message,
Arbol de Vida, seis, seis, seis—
Transmissions from the Nighttime World.
The swirling images on the mutantoid screen fluctuated. The face of the Midnight Queen, vicious and bloody, the mouth lined with fangs—her long arms wrapped around a lover.
The Midnight Queen’s obsidian, coal-black eyes stared down from the screen at its offspring.
The Baron’s imagination.
The mutantoid continuum believed the vision, believed the story; their psychic conviction infected them. The Midnight Queen became real, and the children of the continuum stared at their mother.
Midnight Queen—Nighttime World.
The continuum swayed in unison, craving the humans down in the holds. Craving the humans next to the one river in a dry land, harvested off a natural landscape, the fish, the six-eyed goats, and different roots, before being taken and conditioned or sent to slaughter.
Beliefs of the Baron seeped into their brains, feeding back through transmitters grown in a vial—living transmitters, technoids growing at the stem of their brains, sending thoughts back and forth through rock walls to the deep rooms of butchery, chambers where they prepared the sacrament, keeping the meat alive only long enough.
The mutantoids were experiencing new feelings that they’d never felt before.
The eyes have power.
The eyes have no power.
We do not understand.
Cut transmission—
The blue eyes of the Juggernaut—the Baron’s head released recorded images from his rotting cranium—replaying, replaying.
Danger.
Mutantoids believed the Baron’s myth in the purple light and candle wax made of human fat. The tenets of the Baron’s new religion were being etched on skin parchment by mutantoid scribes.
—Cut transmission—
But it was too late, reason had left them; the transmissions continued to arrive from outer space.
In the purple-lit caves, the mutantoids recited the words: “Arbol de Vida, seis, seis, seis! Arbol de Vida, seis, seis, seis!”
A purple, galvanic light was delivered on a cosmic stream. Thinking that the energy came from across the universe, the mutantoids came out of their darkness, aided by the purple glow, its power finally being unlocked and delivered.
The illusion of a Midnight Queen, the demoness, the priestess of monstrous ways in the Nighttime World—sharp teeth ripping away that which was human—the purple light appearing in the lab of old wartime innovation—abandoned to the onslaught of the green sky. No more power, no more light, no more electronic locks blocking the way to the infinite, and all the purple, in their caves—deep pools, fetid stench and bones.
The beliefs took hold, and the mutantoids hungered in the holes wishing for more, starving.
We shall eat human flesh no more.
It is wrong.
We will starve.
It is wrong.
What shall we do?
We must leave to the stars.
Are the ships ready?
We must meet our queen.
Set the controls for the source of transmission.
Cannot pinpoint for certain.
We will chart new maps.
Deep in the labs, the mutantoid comptroller had eaten the last slivers of human flesh only days before.
Should we destroy the labs, the birthing chambers? The incubation beds and assembly lines?
We will create humans no more.
We shall leave them in the wilderness.
Along the river.
Hundreds of minds, chattering, connected to one line of transmission. Preparing to leave behind their origin as earthlings. The engines powered by the purple light, stored in shrines made of glass and metal.
What of Utopia?
It does not matter.
And the rest of the colonies?
It does not matter.
We will finally go home.
What will we eat?
We can keep them alive and draw their blood.
In suspended animation.
That way they will never know what is being done to them.
Yes. Yes.
Much more humane.
Yes, much.
About the Author
Rudolfo A. Serna was born under the nuclear shadow of Los Alamos National Laboratories and raised in the orchards, mountains, and fields of northern New Mexico. Occupations have included carpenter, landscaper, wild land firefighter, creative writing coordinator, and adjunct professor. With a penchant for ‘70s horror B-movies, psychedelic doom metal, permaculture, and nature worship, he lives with his wife and daughter in Albuquerque, NM, writing dark fantasy sci-fi. A regular contributor to Brick Moon Fiction, his stories can also be seen in Bewildering Stories, Aphotic Realm, and Augur Magazine. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico, and serves as the digital steward of the Mutantroot Art Collective.
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Snow Over Utopia Page 17