Onliest

by J Daniel Batt

  Syn landed hard on her right knee, sending a stab of pain coursing up her leg. She felt like her kneecap had popped off. She reached out and slashed at Taji’s face with her nails. She missed and smacked the ground.

  Taji tumbled over and dropped her full weight on Syn. Syn was locked in place. She struggled to get out from under the weight of the more massive form. Taji held onto both of Syn’s wrists and pressed her own face hard into Syn’s. Nose to nose. Syn could smell the thick, foul breath of her sister. The girl’s nose smashed into Syn’s.

  A flash of white popped into sight. A zipping dot zooming toward them—Blip was nearing. Syn glimpsed him from the corner of her eye. She smiled.

  Taji did too. A gruesome, dark smile.

  Blip was there. Taji leaped up and swerved out of his path. And swung as he passed by.

  The spear contacted the back of him and shattered against his shell. The spear split with a sharp snap. Blip’s casing cracked like an egg with the collision—a deafening crunch and then in a cloud, bits of him flew forward, and, like a meteor from the sky, his white shell slammed into the ground. All dead weight. The dirt clouded around, billowing up, momentarily obscuring the murderous Taji from Syn’s stunned gaze.

  Taji held the two halves of the shattered spear, one jagged piece in each hand, and growled. “You bitch. You just had to come and ruin it all. If you hadn’t shown up, she would’ve taken her time.”

  She fell back down onto Syn, pushing her fists into the girl’s shoulders. Syn pulled at her arms and growled. “Get off!” she grunted through clenched teeth. “And that’s not true. She’s pregnant.”

  “What?” Taji was dismayed and answered by head-butting Syn. The two foreheads cracked as they impacted.

  Syn saw stars as everything went black. She screeched in pain.

  Taji yelled back, “I’m going to kill you!”

  Syn’s fingers scrambled, searched, groped for anything.

  Taji smashed her head again into Syn’s. The girl wheezed as she lost her breath. Her fingers searched and dug in the dirt.

  Taji yelled in Syn’s face, “I hate you! I hate all of you! You’re the worst of us. You’re everything I won’t be!”

  Syn’s fingers brushed against something smooth and cold. That was it. This felt exactly like…her spear. She fumbled at the piece, gripped, and wrenched it from Taji’s grip with a jerk. In the same swift motion, she swiped it across Taji’s wrist.

  Taji howled, but it was cut short as Syn twisted under the girl’s weight, broken half of the spear still in hand, and brought it sharp against Taji’s head, slamming against her temple.

  Taji clutched at her head with the one hand that was not dangling limply. She fell back on the ground and curled up in a fetal position, her knees close to her chin.

  Syn jumped on the girl and jammed the rod down, its shattered edge sharp. But she froze as she hit the girl’s skin. Syn hovered there, the piece of broken spear shaking in her hands. She raised it again and brought it down once more but stopped in the last instant.

  She couldn’t do it. She rolled over and slammed the piece of the spear into the ground, pretending it was Taji. Syn screamed, “Kerwen! Kerwen! Kerwen!” Over and over, she shouted the girl’s name at Taji’s limp form, hoping to drill the name into the girl’s flesh. Hoping that with repetition she could burn it like a brand.

  Taji was no longer howling in pain. As she fell into unconsciousness, it had turned to a whimper and then stopped altogether.

  Syn’s anger felt warm. It felt like blood coursing into her arteries. But the anger felt more than warm. It burned in spots. There were elements of it that were years old. Like an overlooked wound that pinkened and then succumbed to infection, radiating pain with each step, it had festered. Anger at the colonists. Anger at Captain Pote. Anger at the builders. All of them had been fools. They had created a dream and stocked it with the demons of Hell. How could they do that? How could they create her only to have her be some guinea pig? How could they have done such a horrible job? Her anger was at Taji and at Neci and at everyone that had forced her into the very act that she was doing at that moment. Her anger felt like an electric storm. Billowing up and forced through with electrical flashes, shocks of lightning, pure raw power in fierce delights. She wanted to kill her enemy, and it felt right. She felt like this was true. This moment was the one she had been born to meet..

  Beneath it all, another anger coursed. Anger at Blip and his lies. This whole situation borne out of deception. Perhaps if he had lifted the veil of the second Disc earlier, none of this would have come to pass.

  Then, glancing at Blip’s shattered shell on the ground around them, she felt anger at herself for even allowing that thought.

  She glared down at Taji’s unconscious body. She wanted to kill the girl and release all of her rage in an instant. She spat out, “I’m not a killer. I’m not like you and Neci.”

  From far away, a voice called, “Syn.”

  She knew she should recognize the name. She knew that she should answer. But she was unsure why.

  “Syn!” the voice shouted again. It was high-pitched. A chirp. Again. “Syn!”

  Syn slowed. She worried, though, that in her distraction, Taji would take advantage of the moment

  “Syn!”

  Syn slowly looked up at the inert shell of Blip just a few meters away. White shell had burst across the ground. Like a cracked egg, a large portion of the shell was gone, a large jagged edge of curling shell wrapped around a revealing twisted array of blue glowing wires and silver circuit boards. But not all of his outer body was gone. In fact, over half of his shell was still in one piece. Through tears, she chanced, “Blip?”

  A pale sound chirped from within him. Was that a response?

  “Blip?”

  Underneath her hand, his cracked form vibrated and lifted from the ground, wobbly and stuttering. “Blip?”

  With a sharp whistle and then a low hum, Blip’s voice found its way. “Yeee…yes. Yesyesyes. Yes.”

  Syn lept up as Blip floated up as well, under her hand. “Blip! You’re alive! How?” Syn smiled at Blip. A torrent of joy poured through her, warming every part of her. She smiled. He’s alive.

  Then she glanced back at Taji’s unmoving body, and an unbidden thought came to her, I’m free. She winced at her own dark relief.

  “Syn, are you okay?” Blip asked, his words slow and challenged.

  Syn shook her head. Was she okay? “No,” she said, and her mind focused on the stabs of pain and the dull ache of her legs and arms. Then, she realized, that wasn’t what he was talking about. She turned back and looked at the blood that had soaked her arms.

  Her hands were crimson. Her legs were red. The ground around them was red. It was all red. Just like her vision. Just like her thoughts. She went numb at the potential. Had she gone too far? Had she killed Taji?

  “Blip?” she asked. Her words came from far away, an echo in her own mind. Oh, she thought, maybe I didn’t speak loud enough. Again, she said, “Blip?”

  “Syn. It’s okay,” Blip said.

  Syn shook her head. “Is she okay?”

  Blip floated near her. “She’s not dead.”

  Syn’s eyes went wide at the surprise. Taji wasn’t dead, and Blip wasn’t dead! There was a flood of joy and relief at the thought. Syn wasn’t a killer.

  Syn pushed away from the girl and scrambled back. She scooted across the ground, pressing her back against the concrete divider leading to the Jacob platform.

  “Oh God!” Syn cried. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” She looked up at Blip and the sounds stopped, but her lips kept curling around the shape that “I’m sorry” should make. Her mouth kept up the motions like some strange mantra.

  “Syn, it’s fine. It’s okay.” Blip was down beside her. He nudged against her arm and lowered his voice to a calm tone and echoed, “She’s not dead. You had to stop her though.”

  “I had to?” Syn repeated. But her lips then kept moving
around the words “I’m sorry.”

  Blip replied, “She was going to kill both of us. You had to do it. It’s okay.”

  “I had to do it,” Syn said. Yes, that was an answer. That was why. Syn reminded herself that Taji’s threat to her life had motivated it entirely. She refused to think of the anger that had been buried deep inside and billowed over like a volcano. And in not thinking about it, it was all she could think of.

  Syn struggled to look at him through tear-filled eyes. She mumbled, “How?”

  Blip, wobbling in the air and half-broken, pulled away. “Can you get in the Jacob? We have to go.” He hovered in the air with a subtle shake. He was alive, but the impact had hurt him. Each thought radiated through the coil and array of blue tubes and silver boards that peeked through the shattered visage.

  Oh, Blip, how are we ever going to fix you? Syn thought but instead said, “Did you do it?” Syn took a deep breath. Everything focused in her mind. She had sent Blip to send a message to the Ecology. He was back. Now she had to know what had happened. How had he been back that fast? Did he send the message? Had he faced obstacles?

  She asked all of these questions in a stream of words.

  Blip sighed, “Yes. Get in the Jacob, and I’ll answer.”

  Syn came to her feet, shaking as she did so. “Kerwen.” As she spoke, she turned and moved in the direction of the impact point.

  “Syn! Come back!”

  Syn was staggering, dragging her foot as she spoke. “I have to…” There were more words, but she didn’t emphasize them nor did she feel they mattered.

  Blip zoomed next to her. “I sent out the signal. I said everything you told me to say. We have to go. It’s okay. You did you job. I did—"

  “Kerwen.” She said again.

  “Who?”

  “Kerwen!” Syn spat, irritated. How had he forgotten?

  Blip understood. He moved quickly past Syn toward the body lying at the edge of the sand. He dropped down next to it, but as she was still a bit away, Syn couldn’t see what he was doing. Perhaps examining her for life. Perhaps making sure she was really and truly dead.

  Blip flew back to Syn as she neared Kerwen’s corpse.

  Blip blocked Syn’s path, “Don’t. It’s not good.”

  “I killed her.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  Syn pushed around Blip and knelt at Kerwen’s head. The girl was distorted. Her body was far wider than it should be. She hadn’t flattened like some cartoon rabbit, but the impact had molded her body into something strange. Her skull was shattered. Syn reached out to touch the mirror image of herself, her own dead body. Kerwen’s eyes were empty. Only white globes looking out onto the sand.

  “Syn, please,” Blip implored. His voice was urgent. There was fear in it. “We have to go.”

  Syn ran the back of her hand across Kerwen’s cheek. The girl’s skin was already cooling.

  Blip’s voice changed, “Oh! Look!”

  Syn glanced up, her reverent pause broken. Blip was staring past her, further up the arc of the Disc. There, one of the Jacob towers had lit up and one of the cabs was rising up the tower. “What’s that? Who’s on it?” she asked.

  “I think some of the bots.” As he spoke, dark shadows became visible on the horizon, moving toward Syn and Blip.

  “What’s that?” Syn asked.

  Blip remained silent. She had always envied his vision. He could see things nearly across the arc of the Disc itself, from one edge to the other if he concentrated.

  After a moment, he said, “I think they’re more bots.”

  “Do you recognize them?”

  “There’s a cleaning bot or two. A few house bots. Primarily little ones.”

  “But do you recognize them?” Syn insisted. Then she realized he had never been there when the Ecology had found her. He was not at the celebration nor in the workshop. Blip wouldn’t know many of the bots. “Never mind.”

  Syn stood and walked to Blip. She glanced back down at Kerwen. The body was still motionless, and Syn shivered. Her actions had led to Kerwen’s death. I’m one of them. After a pause, she gave sound to the thought. “I’m like them.”

  Blip didn’t respond. She was hoping he’d give a trite answer like “No, you’re not.” Instead, he said, “You didn’t want to. You could’ve, but you didn’t. That’s why you’re different.”

  The world around them went stark white.

  An enormous rumble came from behind them, and they turned to see a massive fireball several kilometers away—an explosion that rivaled the one that destroyed Zondon Almighty. The eruption from the location of the former city.

  The second bomb.

  40

  The Great Flood

  "A great inundation, together with an earthquake, swept the land so rapidly that only a few people escaped in their skin canoes to the tops of the highest mountains."

  —Orowignarak Myth, Alaska

  Zondon Almighty was nearly six kilometers away now. That put the city—and the blinding explosion of the cobalt device—almost half-way up the arc. The entire detonation was completely visible and the light itself was near-blinding.

  “Run! Blip yelled.

  The light and explosion were followed by a deep rumbling. The entire ground shook. Then it stopped. Suddenly, from the center of the blast, a fountain of water erupted, streaming in a massive column.

  “The shield!” Syn said.

  Blip swung around and pushed her. “Get to the Jacob.”

  Syn looked out at the racing shadows. She could see the bots clearly now. There were seven of them, and they were moving as fast as they could, but they were still a good half kilometer away. And none of them were as fast as Blip. “They won’t make it.”

  “We won’t make it.” He had pushed her against the door of the Jacob. “Get in! We have to get up before the water hits.”

  “We have to wait for them.”

  “No, we don’t! I have to keep you safe.”

  “I made a promise!”

  “What did you promise?”

  “I promised to save them.”

  “From what?”

  “From this Disc! They told me it was dying. I told them about our Disc. I told them when I found you I’d come back for them.”

  Blip flew back and then zoomed at Syn, smashing into her, pushing her off-balance. She landed on her butt with a thud, but to Blip’s delight, she fell into the Jacob.

  “Let’s go.” He flew over and started working with the control panel. The doors chimed.

  “No!” Syn yelled and leaned forward to put her hand in the door. “We can wait.”

  “We’re not waiting.”

  “This is stupid. The water’s not here.” She couldn’t tell where the water was. The column of water was streaking high into the clouds and there were splatters of rain falling down several meters out. The water had to be rising around the city, and she was certain some great wave was on its way to them, but she couldn’t see it from the dunes.

  And then she could. The ground around the city halfway up the Disc was flattened. The water. It was flowing out and rising. She couldn’t see it over her own horizon, but she saw how far it was spreading on the other side of the former Zondon Almighty. If it was flowing equally everywhere, it was only a kilometer or two away now. And moving fast.

  Syn pushed up on her knees, winced as a jab of pain shot through her leg, and cupped her hands around her mouth to shout, “Come on! Hurry!”

  “Syn, they’re not going to make it. We have to go now. If that water hits us first, we’re dead.”

  “Well survive, Blip! Come on—just give me another second. You can close the doors when you see water.”

  “I see water! Right there! It’s shooting up from the shield layer! Think about it—over 400 billion liters of water is going to be flooding this Disc!”

  The roaring of the rushing water grew to a deafening pitch. A mountain of water was rushing in.

  The bots were moving fa
st. But now there were six of them. One had dropped back. Syn wanted to race out to them, but she had to hold the door. Blip wouldn’t leave her, would he? No! That wouldn’t happen. But he would come out after her, and she could kill them both. From the Jacob door, she yelled again, “Hurry!”

  They were just a few meters out, at the base of the plaza. Two small Disc cleaning bots. A bouncing bot that resembled Arquella, but it was far less shiny and bounced and rolled—it didn’t hover. There were also two small block bots. Six. And maybe a floating ball bot—an eye-bot—circling around. Okay, now there were more than six.

  “We’re—" shouted the robot. The word after “we’re” sounded like “coming,” but the sound of the water overwhelmed it, and Syn wasn’t sure what was said.

  “Blip, you hold this. Just give me a couple more seconds.”

  “That’s all we have!”

  The eye-bots whizzed into the Jacob, followed by a cleaning bot. There were still five more out there.

  Behind the racing bots a wall of water rose up. There it was! And it was rushing at a tremendous speed. Again, she heard a boom. What was propelling it? She had seen the waterfalls tumble, but she’d never seen anything move with such power. It grew and grew until it filled the horizon.

  The closest eye-bot was almost there, and it chirped as it saw Syn.

  “Huck!” Syn cried. It was Huck! He had survived. The bot raced and slammed into Syn. She squealed with delight. “You’re alive! You’re alive! I thought you had died.”

  Huck replied with a series of whistles as Blip looked on, confused.

  Another cleaning bot crossed the threshold. Its hide was beat and bruised, and it looked to be painted with mud. Another one of the bouncing bots managed to make it. It rolled in and smashed into the others piling up in the corner.

  “Hurry!” Syn yelled, but she knew her words were unheard. “Wait, Taji!” She remembered the unconscious body still laying in the sand and glanced in that direction. There was a silhouetted figure moving their way. “Blip, Taji!”