by Andy Giesler
I could use some rest.
Anyhow. Thank you again for showing me such kindness and hospitality. I don’t believe I’ve tasted honeycakes so fine as those from Beekeep Lora. I’ll speak kindly of them in my travels. Carter Jon’s boiled ham and kraut? That, too. That was something real special. And so many other lovely foods I couldn’t even name them all.
I look forward to gentle sleep on your Weaver Patience’s cot. Thanks to her for keeping me.
I’ll be round about Humblewash tomorrow, and I’ll share Common with you midday if you’ll tolerate me. Then, how about this? We’ll get back here just past an early dinner, and I’ll tell the rest of what happened.
Thank you all so kindly.
Sleep well, peace on you, and Grandmother Root smile upon you.
Words from the Reckoning, So Very Long Ago: Morton and Aura Lee
1
Morton and Aura Lee and the First Chimera
December 2, 2161
In the center of his head, Morton’s own voice said, “Aura Lee’s calling.”
“How?” Morton asked the voice. “I’m in lock-down.”
“I don’t know, man,” the voice replied. “She got through somehow. You know how she is.”
Morton glanced at the clock in his overlay. “Tell her fifteen minutes. Remind me.”
“Right.”
He read half of the next sentence.
“She’s, ah…insistent.”
“Look, I just need to finish reviewing this. Tell her to hang on.”
“In that case, she said answer her motherfucking call or she’ll pull out your motherfucking eyeballs and shove them up your ass, which shouldn’t inconvenience you at all since your motherfucking head’s already up there, because this is motherfucking important you pin-headed motherfucker.” The voice in Morton’s head paused briefly. “Her words. Not mine.”
He snorted. “I gathered. Fine. Answer.”
Lee appeared in his overlay, her lips compressed into a line.
“We have a rogue naughtwork,” she said.
Morton frowned. “There can’t be. Who’d you hear this from?”
She grabbed the drone roughly and turned it toward a table where something was squealing and thrashing against it restraints. Something that looked like it might have been human once.
“What the hell is that?” he asked.
She turned the drone back on herself. “Hablas Ingles? Dude. It’s a rogue. Motherfucking. Naughtwork.”
“Where are you?”
“Canberra.”
“Australia?”
“Yes, Morton. I’m in Canberra. Australia. But that’s sort of not the big news here.”
“Naughts can’t jump from one host to another, Lee. Has to be something else. A mutation that overrides the safeties would make the naughts inviable.” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Right?”
She grimaced for a few seconds. “Supposed to be right.”
“Wait. What’s ‘supposed to be?’ We’ve had that verified how many times? Hell, you’ve personally verified it how many times? That’s not just opinion, it’s…it’s a mathematical fact.”
Lee pointed the drone back at the thrashing thing again. “And yet.”
“My God.”
“Yeah.”
“But how did a naughtwork from another host…”
She stared into the camera again. “That’s not the question. Neither is where I am, or what his name was, which, if you ask me that, I swear to God I will fly back there and turn you inside-out.”
“Right. You’re right,” Morton replied. “What to do next.”
“Yup.”
“Activate its recall switch?”
“Hey, that never even occurred to me. So glad I called. Of course we tried a recall, dipshit. But maybe I forgot to mention? This poor guy has a rogue. Motherfucking. Naughtwork. We have no idea where the rogues came from, so there’s no ID we can use to shut them down. And thanks to our own fucking brilliant intellectual property protections…”
“…the quantum Zeno protections won’t let us examine it.”
“There’s the Morton I know. Correct. We’ll run a purge on his body, but if his naughts have gotten into somebody else, we can’t find them. Once we reintroduce his own naughts, they’ll fix his body, but his brain’s beef stew now. Angry, angry beef stew. No fixing the forebrain. So…what’s next?”
Morton wiped the sweat from his neck and slumped into his chair. Moaned and looked at the ceiling, Lee’s image staying down near his desk. “Who else knows?”
“Fortunately, he was remote when it happened. So it’s just me, you, and the six people he attacked. But good news! Five of them won’t say anything on account of deadness. The survivor should be fine once we purge and repair her. Three regional IFB staff know, two techs and one from Information Retention. Oh, also the park rangers who tranqed thus guy to his eyeballs, anybody he attacked before these six, the Canberra Police, and the Chief Minister, whatever the hell that is. The Chief Minister plans to tell the Prime Minister. Everybody’s solemnly promised to keep it quiet, so I figure it’s already in the wind.”
“Good lord.” He shook his head. Looked back at her. “Get home. I need you working on the ‘how.’ Detection, prevention, remediation. I’ll get Livv and Michael working on next steps. IR can work on containment and a cover story.”
“Livv and Michael and their crew in IR are post-human psychopaths.”
“Yeah, well. This is why we have post-human psychopaths.”
When I Was Twenty: Poison Gifts
1
Midword
My name is Root.
I was twenty when my village burned me alive in the Pit. I died there, choked by fumes and burnt to death in a pile of sticks. Sticks laid down by the good folks of Surecreek. Sticks set ablaze by my own ma.
Least I think I died. Seems I must have. Since I’m talking to you right now, you maybe doubt I died. You’ve good reason to doubt it. Most often, dead is dead.
But like Ma said: sometimes a dead’un gets back up again.
After Ma and Honeydipper Sadie did what was needed with the Unkind Cup that afternoon, my head went funny, and I don’t recall anything real clear about the rest of that cool October day.
I recall hearing something loud right in the middle of my head. Maybe a voice. Maybe my own voice, like before.
Recall something kicking my whole body, every part of it at once.
Standing up sharp and choking in the sparks and ashes. Smelling myself cooking.
Leaping out of that Pit like it was no more than a muddy puddle, dug right and proper though it was, two women deep.
Growling like a mad animal. Wrapped in smoke and flames.
Folks screaming and running. Meek, gentle folks so quiet they’d never so much as farted out loud in their lives, screaming their throats raw, pushing children and cripples to the ground to get away from me.
Seeing Ma beside the Pit, staring at me, her head cocked, her staff in her hand. Still as stone.
Me climbing, or leaping maybe, over Surecreek’s wall.
Killing a ram. Popping off its head like it was a dandelion. Eating a meal right there. Dragging the rest of its carcass into the woods.
Angling toward that little clear creek just outside Surecreek. Once I was in it, doubling back real sharp, wading in the other direction to confuse anybody who might try to follow later.
Stumbling, dizzy and confused, deep into the night. Using rocks and streams and branches when I could to break up my trail.
Crawling into a pricker patch with my ram.
Having another meal, my body so hot I thought it might catch fire all over again.
And the last thing I recall was thinking: I’m alone. Absolutely and completely alone. What will I do now?
2
A Good-old Story
Gebohra Muerta and the Poison Gifts
So very long ago, so I’m told, Gebohra Muerta visited the People with a sack of wondrous gifts
. When the People saw her, they rejoiced and warmly welcomed her to Common to sup. There, she showed them her wonders, and they took her into the bosom of their village, and gladly, oh so gladly, they accepted her gifts.
Using her gifts, the People made a bounty beyond all need. They learned things that none had learned before. They remade the world.
And in doing this, they brought bitter sorrow on all the World That Was.
Yet here’s the sadness of Gebohra Muerta. Here’s why the People welcomed her so warmly and accepted her gifts.
Gebohra Muerta had no malice in her heart. If she had, more folks would have seen her gifts for the poison they held. For the wickedness they brought. For the doom that was in them. But she meant the People only good. That was clear to them as water in rain. For Gebohra Muerta loved the People, deep as she loved herself. Deeper even, truth be told.
So she did for them as best she knew. And because of her love, oh! Such woe the People suffered. They did not see what ruin the gifts would bring.
But Grandmother Root saw.
Grandmother Root dwelt in the forest and was not partial to worldly wonders. She saw Gebohra Muerta for the kindness she meant, and for the horror she brought. She saw the poison, unintended, in those gifts. She saw that if she did nothing, then all the People would perish. And she knew she must do the hard thing. The mournful thing. The thing that was Badbefore yet might end Goodafter. For Grandmother Root loved the People, deep as she loved herself. Deeper even, truth be told.
So with sorrow beyond imagining, she found the Wrathful Spirits. The Wrathful Spirits heard the good sense in Grandmother Root’s words: that, having seen these things, and having touched them, and having used them, the poison would be in the People for all the rest of their days. Even if they would repent, they would pass the poison of remaking from one to another until all had perished.
Grandmother Root’s words roused the Wrathful Spirits, and the Wrathful Spirits rebuked the People. They destroyed the People’s village, and tore down its wall, leaving not one stone upon another. They gathered up the People and bore them to a great Pit. The first Pit. And as they did it, the Wrathful Spirits wept. For they loved the People, deep as they loved themselves. Deeper even, truth be told.
Yet a very few among the People were untainted by the poison gifts. When Gebohra Muerta came, some of them were out working in their fields. Some of them were up watching on the village wall. Some of them were in the village, but they thought just as Grandmother Root did: that gifts seeming so great must not be good. Grandmother Root bade the Wrathful Spirits spare these few. She gathered them together, just thirteen families, and they stood by the Pit as she said the words, the first time any weaver had said them. Then they set the very first cleansing fire.
And all the People perished, all but just those precious few.
Seeing this, Gebohra Muerta cried out in anguish. She did not see the reason of it. She did not feel the love behind it. She only saw the ashes of her beloved People, and the smoke of their spirits fleeing to the sky. And so, weeping greatly, she watched their smoke as it settled in the stars. We see the smoke of their spirits at night, up in the Village of the Dead, a great, hazy band of light across the sky.
Before the Wrathful Spirits went to their secret places to mourn and rest, Grandmother Root asked one more thing of them: to make as safe a place as they might for the thirteen families who yet lived.
The Wrathful Spirits drew a great circle around the families, and they dug a vast Void to protect them—a Void as deep as the world. As they labored, the Wrathful Spirits wept a torrent of tears for their beloved People who had passed. Those tears flowed together and became all our rivers and streams. The wind of the Wrathful Spirits’ passing emptied the Pit and scattered the People’s ashes wide and yonder. Those ashes settled deep and became all our hills and high places.
And that circle they made, safeguarded by the Void? Why, that became the World That Is.
Once they had made the World That Is, the Wrathful Spirits went to their secret places to rest and mourn. Then Grandmother Root chased Gebohra Muerta across the width of the World That Is, to its farthest place, and there they both fled to the sky, Gebohra Muerta to be near her beloved People and far from the Wrathful Spirits, and Grandmother Root to watch her, and to watch over us all.
Yet Gebohra Muerta loves us still. So now and again her stars come down and touch the land, and she roams the World That Is, seeking those who will accept her poison gifts.
And Grandmother Root loves us still. So when she sees what’s afoot, she hurries down to do what’s needed, though it breaks her heart to do it.
And the Wrathful Spirits love us still. So when Grandmother Root rouses them, they go forth with love and mourning to make the World That Is safe again from those who would remake it.
As for the World That Was, we do not know what walks there, nor would we find out if we could. Just count it a blessing, children, that we’ve been set apart from that poison place. And count it a blessing that Grandmother Root and the Wrathful Spirits watch over us. But though they watch over us, always remember, children. Always be watchful and be wary.
For Gebohra Muerta loves us still.
Words from the Reckoning, So Very Long Ago: Ruth Troyer’s Journal
1
June 15, 2163
Haven’t had the will to write. I need to write.
Eli went with Quint and Marsh on one of their trips. He wouldn’t say where, like always. After three days, the brothers came back without him. Said Eli was killed by animals.
I asked, “What kind of animals?”
Marsh said, “Wild animals,” with that grin of his.
When I ask Teddy about it, he looks guilty. When I ask Quint or Marsh about it, they look smug. So Eli is dead. Quint and Marsh killed him.
I’m going to write some unkind things now. I’ve been thinking about what this journal is for. Why I should keep writing it. I’ve decided truth’s more important than kindness here. I hope God will forgive me for it.
Here it is.
Eli is dead, and I do not regret it.
I miss him, same way you miss a scab once it falls off. I keep rubbing at where it used to be, troubled that it’s not there, but not really sorry it’s gone. That’s cruel, but it’s so.
Sometimes I wished bad things on him. A shop accident. A sickness. A spooked horse. None were very likely, but still. Things happen. People die. Sometimes I even wondered how I might help a bad thing to happen. I wouldn’t have done it, I don’t guess. I was raised to be a peaceful woman. Year after year, I kept reminding myself that it was not my place to mete out Eli’s punishment, so I pretended I didn’t even want to. But starting today, I want to write cold truth here. The cold truth is I wished him ill. I hope God will forgive me that. Since He knows all the awful reasons for it, I suppose He might.
Besides missing Eli, I feel something else. Not happiness, surely. I guess it’s more like relief. Relief that I don’t need to fear him anymore. Relief that I didn’t have to make any bad things happen to him.
Martha’s so young she doesn’t seem to notice he’s gone, really. She’s asked for Papa a couple times, but that’s about all. Waneta and Atlee are old enough to have many memories of him, yet they’re too young to have come in conflict with him much. It’s hardest on them. We comfort them as we can.
But Eli was hard on Hannah and Josiah. He’d taken his hand to Josiah more often lately. And while I don’t think he’d hit Hannah, he’d begun snapping at her in his quiet, angry voice, sometimes calling her harlot, whore, slut. She’s a gentle, proper young woman, and it clearly shook her. I suspect his hurtful words weren’t about her actions, but about his thoughts. So Hannah and Josiah both seem upset by the situation, but I think they’re relieved, too, though they’d never say it.
Quint and Marsh have brought more strays. Don’t know how many, but they often visit our home. Handing out weapons makes Marsh quite popular with them. Some seem acquainted with
him already, and they remind me of him. Rough people. Being near them twists my stomach. I’m afraid.
I haven’t spoken with a neighbor in weeks. No Sunday worship service in the longest time. Eli said travel was too dangerous. Now the strays say that, too. I wonder how other families in our church district are faring.
Going to sleep. Been so tired lately.
2
July 7, 2163
So long out of touch with our neighbors and church district. I often ask Teddy the reason for it, and whether we might have a worship service or at least a meal with others. He always says no, that it’s too dangerous to travel even a short distance.
I asked Quint about it once and he just knocked me down. He’s bigger than Eli was and hits harder. I don’t suppose I’ll ask him again. I wouldn’t even consider asking Marsh. He scares me. At least Quint was somewhat respectable once, working with Teddy as a bio. I don’t know what Marsh was. Nothing wholesome.
I’ve been trying to keep things as regular as I can, for the children’s sake. And for my own, I suppose. Mostly, we keep to schedule.
Monday, washing.
Tuesday, ironing.
Wednesday would be shopping. We find plenty to do anyway.
Thursday, sewing.
Friday, baking.
Saturday, cleaning.
Sunday, Lord’s day. The children and I hold a little service at home, just an hour or two. We pray and read, and though I maybe shouldn’t, I do my best at a sermon. We don’t sing any more. That bothered the strays something awful. They said it sounded like somebody died. Last month Marsh stormed in during a hymn and hit me so hard it loosened a tooth. He said we can sing faster or not sing at all. So we don’t sing at all.