Atoma and the Blockchain Game

by Gerard O'Neill

  I paused before a bush and saw that it was shaking. They were only tiny movements like the vibrations made by a heavy truck passing by but it was definitely the plant that moved.

  The fronds were exuding a sickeningly sweet scent. I stared at the opening foliage in surprise. It seemed to be welcoming me into its embrace, but the sticky substance dripping from the leaves reminded me of saliva from a mad dog’s maw, and I recoiled in horror.

  A blue leaf, larger than others dropped before my face. I tried to brush it aside with my hand but it stuck fast to my glove. I tried shaking it off the material, but it held me tight, and to my amazement, the branch grew taut. I stepped closer and jerked my arm violently up and down, forward and back.

  “Nako,” I called out. “There’s this glue on the surface of the leaves. I can’t pull my hand free.”

  She had walked on ahead of me and turned to look back.

  “Are you giving me a Roman salute,” she laughed.

  “Nako, this bush is hissing at me,” I told her.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Nako said. “Plants don’t do that.”

  “This one does,” I said in dismay. “I can’t break my glove free!”

  Nako’s smile had faded quickly as she stepped closer.

  “These plants are soft. Why don’t you just rip it out of the ground and smash it?”

  “It’s not soft anymore,” I told her.

  I reached for the ion beam razor at my hip.

  “—but no problem,” I called out. “This will slice through anything.”

  I gripped the butt and held the end above the leaf that curled around my hand.

  “Take that and suffer, you fricking weed!”

  I pulled the trigger, but the gun was dead.

  “The stupid thing won’t work.”

  Nako ran to me.

  “Let me try mine,” she said, stepped closer and raised her gun.

  “Don’t touch it, whatever you do,” I screamed.

  “Mines not firing either,” she said.

  She slid the ion knife back into her belt and reached for my hand.

  “Seriously, Nako!” I yelled. “Don’t touch it. You will get stuck too.”

  She dropped down to her knees for a closer look at the thick stem of my assailant.

  “The thing has spikes coming out of it,” she said, and I heard the sound of disbelief in her voice. “I can actually see them coming out of the trunk! They’re growing bigger. They’re almost as thick as deer antlers. What is this thing?”

  The branch had grown tauter and I could feel it pulling me slowly into the spikes I could see clearly protruding from its trunk.

  “There are droplets of sap running off the points,” she said, looking up at me with wide eyes.

  “Like venom on the end of snakes fangs?” I asked. “Do you think that’s what it is?”

  “Let’s not hang around long enough to find out,” she said, and she grabbed my arm and pulled.

  But no matter how hard she pulled on my arm she couldn’t break the plant’s grip on me.

  The hissing was much louder now as other plants were drawing close. They were definitely not intending to greeting me. The icy lump in my stomach told me their hissing was more of a general shout out to each other that lunch was about to be served.

  I stumbled on the slick gelled surface at my feet and fell to my knees.

  Behind me, I heard a double thump. The noise of two feet hitting the ground.

  I turned and saw a boy in the tree line. He was tall and slim with bronzed skin and shining dark hair. His eyes were huge. He wore a simple top and pants. That’s about all I had time to notice because Nako screamed. I turned back to see a leafy branch reach for my outstretched arm.

  There was no time to wonder how the boy and his huge armor covered horse could sneak up on us. Long dark spikes were coming my way. The longest was already more than two feet long. The plant had either pulled my hand into the spike or directed its lance toward my hand or both. Through the material of my glove, I felt the pressure of the point. I could also smell the acrid fumes. My suit was melting, and I knew it shouldn’t be doing that. More points were pressing on my arm. The trunk was much closer. The slow movement forward had speeded up. In plant terms, it was as good as making a final lunge toward its dinner.

  “Whatever that is coming out of the spikes it’s burning into my suit,” I yelled.

  Nako hadn’t seen the boy. She was on her knees, desperately searching the ground for anything solid enough to bash the plant, but all she found were the soft crawling leaves. She looked up at the sound of a sword being pulled from its scabbard.

  “Where did he come from?” Nako yelled, when he strode forward, knocking her aside.

  “Hey!” She yelled, tumbling over the ground.

  She stopped short of another bush and looked up in horror as it opened its branches above her. She let out a scream and rolled out of its way.

  Sunlight flashed as the metal edge came down.

  The trunk lurched to one side, and I heard a shrill scream, this time from the plant.

  The boy swung the blade upward in a wide arc and then brought it down again to slice through the branches and cut through the spine-covered trunk in one diagonal sweeping. The top half of the bush hit the ground to my side with a heavy thump. I felt its grip on me instantly slacken.

  The sword cleaved down once more, and I was released to fall back, the plant appendage dangled from my glove like the arm of a squid.

  The plants sounded like a flock of angry parrots, their screeching shrill and piercing.

  Nako rolled onto her feet and only just in time.

  A plant creature, larger than the first, reared up over us. An orange pattern flashed menacingly up and down the trunk of the new attacker. The same warning was echoed on the trunks of others close behind.

  We were being encircled in slow motion from all sides, and we saw that our last avenues of escape were quickly being closed off.

  His hand was on my forearm and in a moment he had pulled to my feet.

  He spoke quickly, and although the sounds that tumbled from his mouth were strange I still recognized them as words. Then he was gone.

  We watched him in horror as he ran to his horse to drop the sword back into its sheath.

  He leaped up into the saddle, and when he realized we were still frozen in fear, he gave a piercing whistle and frantically his arms at us.

  I ripped the plant appendage off my glove and reached out for Nako.

  “Come on,” I yelled. “He wants us to jump up behind him.”

  We reached the horse before the plants had closed the circle and stared up at the saddle.

  “That is going to be some jump,” Nako said.

  He leaned over the side of the animal and offered an outstretched hand.

  “I say we don’t waste time,” Nako said.

  He called out again and clicked his fingers.

  I slid my hand in his, bent at the knees, and sprang. I landed in the saddle as though I had practiced the move my whole life.

  The boy glanced around the gathering pack of orange flashing hungry blue vine-covered and spiked fence posts.

  “Oh, c'mon!” Nako called out, holding out her hand. “You can’t leave me here alone.”

  The boy reached down to grasp her by the arm and in one swift move he had landed her in the saddle behind me.

  He turned and pointed to a band running through metal rings beside my thighs, wriggling his fingers in loops and pulling on the ribbon to make the holes wide enough for our gloves.

  “Hand grips,” Nako yelled in my ear.

  I hooked my fingers into the loops on either side and held on.

  We were off without any further warning. It was not a sudden leap forward but more of a smooth constant increase in speed. It was as though we had taken to the air.

  I felt the sensation of the armor plates moving in unison under me as the ground swished past us. How could the horse move so qui
ckly through a forest?

  The boy looked back over his shoulder, staring at me with cat-like eyes. They were much larger than I was used to seeing, and yet in proportion with his head. He was very tall, but I was sure he was also young. Perhaps even younger than me. He turned back to the horse and gave a long low whistle.

  The animal picked up pace until the trees zipped by. At times it was almost as though we were parallel to the ground, but the sensation lasted for only brief moments before we were the right way up again.

  “The ride is smoother at a gallop,” I called out over my shoulder.

  “This isn’t a gallop,” Nako shouted into my ear. “—And we are not riding a horse.”

  “It’s dressed in armor,” I yelled back to her.

  “Look at its head!” She yelled in my ear. “See how it looks bright red? Well, it was white when we first got on.”

  And sure enough, I saw the feathers adorning the head and neck had changed color. It was not only the color that changed, but the patterns also kept on changing. As I stared, it was like gazing at a kelp forest under the ocean waves.

  “And it’s not wearing a headdress. Look again. Those feathers are growing right out of the head!”

  30

  Double Pupils

  The forest flickered by and before long we were climbing a low range of hills. It was grassland for the most part. There were also small stands of blue and green leafed trees scattered over the slopes.

  When we reached the peak of the first line of hills, he brought the creature to a stop. He swiveled in the saddle to stare back at the forest. Then he turned his head to let his gaze run along contours of the hills. The large eyes taking in all of our surroundings. When he was satisfied, he leaped off the animal and helped us off its back.

  Although he stood at over six and a half feet, I was still certain he was a boy. It was the unmistakable energy I saw in his movements. The parade of expressions that crossed his face.

  Nako stared at the boy’s hands. The fingers were long and slender, and the skin had a copper hue that shone as though it might have been oiled or wet with perspiration.

  “His hands are beautiful,” she said. “And weird. Hey, look at the way he’s staring at you.”

  His head on his long neck as he regarded me with a look of puzzlement. It was a look of pure fascination. His eyes were so round that they bulged a little, but that wasn’t the reason I had thought them odd before. It was the irises. They were dark, almost black. The oddness was in the elongated pupils inside the irises. They weren’t cat-like at all. I looked closer and almost fell over when saw he had double pupils. One sat on top of the other. If his irises had been lighter, they might look as though a figure eight sat in the center of each.

  He looked as graceful as a gazelle that happened to be standing on its hind legs. The boy's calves, forearms, shoulders, and long neck had the well-developed and defined muscles of a professional baseball player. Apart from his height and weird skin color, his build alone would have attracted the attention of any high school's track and field coach. No athlete I had seen looked as impressive as him.

  Even the hair on his head was different. It sat in layers like the feathered crown of an exotic bird. He had used a paste, and it gave the effect of soft rubber that allowed it a uniform movement. Each strand must have been three times thicker than my own, and each was flattened like a long fine blade of grass found on Earth. It had a metallic black hue and a blue glint. The idea struck me that maybe it wasn’t a hair paste he used after all. It was a kind of emulsion.

  I reached up and touched his scalp, and he ducked and touched his head with the tips of his fingers as if to check everything was still where it should be. He stared at me in surprise.

  I rubbed my fingers together and looked at the result. There was no residue of any kind left behind. Whatever he used to get that effect it was not a paste, emulsion, or oil. Perhaps he wore a sort of hat. That was a question that could wait. I certainly didn’t dare to reach up to touch his hair again. He might ride off and we would be left here alone, to face whatever other nasties lay in wait for us.

  “We have got to stop staring at each other or we’ll begin to feel like freaks, right?” I asked him.

  But he stared past me to the forest and waved a hand in front of his face.

  “That’s got to mean you should not stare at me,” Nako said.

  “He’s looking back in the direction we came from,” I told her.

  The boy was pointing to the treetops and waving his hand in front of his face again. The look of anxiety on his face was unmistakable.

  “Looks like the forest was not a good place to land,” I said to Nako.

  “I guess not,” she replied.

  “Do you think Jacinda made it?” I asked her.

  “I hope so,” she said, and she did not meet my gaze.

  “Hey, look!” She exclaimed grabbing my gloved hand and turning it over. A long flat blue leaf was stuck against my forearm as we watched it moved like a caterpillar toward my elbow.

  He pulled the sword from the scabbard and waved Nako back. Slowly and with great care, he scraped the sticky tentacle off the silver material. When it fell to the ground, he pierced it through with the tip of the long blade and held it high in front of him. He pointed at the leaf and shook his hand side-to-side in front of his face.

  “The hand wave definitely means a big no,” Nako muttered.

  When he saw the horror on our faces, he suddenly gave a mischievous grin. The smile changed the strangeness of his face into something warm and familiar. He was definitely a boy.

  “He’s going to be fun to have around,” I told her.

  31

  Copper Skin

  The boy slid the sword back into the scabbard, and the creature grumbled softly, shifting to and fro. He whistled to the creature, and it quietened. The head was so dark as to make it nearly impossible to distinguish any features under the crest of feathers: the creature’s plumage now a deep yellow with ripples of blue.

  The skin of the animal was made of strips of hide that was colored dark gray and streaked by veins of deep purple. Each leathery layer was arranged in a manner you might expect to see adorn the fantastic child born out of a marriage between a rhino and an armadillo. I stared at the dark face of the beast and froze when I saw a great yellow eye roll in the massive head. It stared at me, and parted its lips, revealing a menacing set of long sharp teeth.

  The boy looked at my frightened face and gave a high-pitched cackle like the sound of a bird. He looked up at the sun high in the sky. Without another word, he leaped back onto the mount. He turned the beast and gazed down at us. Then still smiling he nodded once to the two of us and wheeled the animal around to face the second line of hills.

  “Hey!” Nako said. “Don’t you leave us here.”

  She reached out and grabbed one long copper-colored calf.

  The boy stared down at her hand.

  “You can’t leave us here!” Nako told him. “This place is dangerous and we don’t know our way around.”

  The beast made groaned and stepped away from us.

  The boy turned his attention on me.

  I pointed at my mouth and rubbed my stomach.

  He spoke, and the words fell from his mouth in a tumble.

  “We can’t understand you,” I told him.

  He repeated the words and again we heard the rising tone at the end.

  I turned to Nako.

  “Was that a question?”

  “Oh, don’t look at me,” she said. “I speak English, Japanese, and three varieties of Chinese and none of it is going to help us here on donut world. So let’s just nod our heads like we agree with him.”

  “Yes-yes, to whatever it is you’re saying,” I told him. “Take us with you.”

  Nako yelled at him in one of her non-English languages.

  He turned to look again at the second line of hills.

  She tried again, this time in a different tongue.r />
  He looked back at her and waves his hand in front of his face.

  The beast shifted restlessly.

  “Was that no?” I asked her.

  “I’m not going to give up that easy,” she declared. I’ve got three more languages left.

  She tried again.

  This time his head snapped back to her, and he froze in the saddle.

  “What did you say then?” I asked her.

  I was saying the same thing, in ancient Japanese, Mandarin, and one language from Formosa. Ancient Japanese worked.

  The boy regained his composure. He pointed to the empty space on the saddle behind him, and gestured to us to take his hand.

  “Come on,” Nako said. “—before he changes his mind.”

  32

  Wriggle

  The sun had slid behind the first range of hills by the time he stopped the last time for the evening. It was a shallow cave: a hollowing under a rounded rocky slab that jutted at such an angle from the slope, that it resembled a crashed flying saucer.

  The boy walked a short distance down the hill to a stand of spindly that lacked any foliage. We watched him rip and tear at the bushes growing at the base of the thin trunks. Once he had a large stack of thin tangled matter, he carried the bundle to the entrance of the cave and after waving us aside spread the tangle over the gritty floor.

  We watched him unload the beast. He wasn't asking for help, so sat under the overhang and watched him in silence. He pulled a furry dead creature with two heads off the saddle and laid the body inside the cave. When we protested he compromised with us by placing the carcass close to the entrance. He pulled a large rolled mat from across the back of the saddle and spread it over the plant tangle. Then, he threw himself down on the makeshift mattress with a sigh

  “I’m hungry,” I told Nako.

  “Here,” she reached behind me and unfastened the small pack clipped to my suit.