by A. R. Knight
The Ooblot’s holding - in hardened grips of itself - a pair of what look like translucent spiderwebs. Viera and I don’t hesitate. Even if this things are meant to kill us, breathing this air seems a more terrible way to die than anything these filters could do.
They’re cool to touch at first, and slightly wet, as if grabbing a damp rope. I hold it up to my face as T’Oli says they belong over where we breath. As if sensing my intention, the filter squirms in my hand, reaches out and grips my cheeks, my chin and my forehead. Pulls itself to me, then flattens against my face.
I can’t see what it’s doing, so I look at Viera, and over where she breathes - her nose and mouth - the filter glows bright white for a moment, and when the glow recedes, there’s a solid pearl coating. The filter feels like wearing paint, but it works; I’m breathing in and out and there’s no scratch, no choking weight of decay and ash.
The filter glosses my eyes too, at first making it seem as though everything is now just a shade lighter than it was - the black ash now looks gray, and T’Oli is closer to the snow I’ve seen on the tops of far away mountains than the milk it used to be.
“How are you handling this?” I ask the Ooblot.
“We breathe through pores in our skin,” T’Oli says. “It’s about calibrating myself to catch the particles I need and kick the others.”
Already those yellow spots are shrinking as T’Oli does what it needs to do. I suppose if an Ooblot can harden itself, it might be able to do that on such a fine level as to block out the same things the filters do for us.
Turns out Ooblots are hardy creatures.
Now that we’re not dying as we breathe, I actually take a look around where we landed. The foggy ash makes it hard to see far, but what’s there looks like the aftermath of a fire. A vast plain coated in the flaky stuff.
During dry summers, I’d seen fires tear through the plains west of the jungles - their devastating journeys given away by the massive plumes of smoke - and my father had taken me once to see what they left behind. This scene matches those childhood memories, but what’s confusing to me is that life comes back after a fire.
Ignos renews, after all.
Here, though, there’s no sign of that. No plants poking back up through the grit, no weeds trying to make a start. It’s as though life here has given up.
“What happened?” Viera asks the air and, so far as I can hear, she receives no reply.
“Let’s go west,” I announce. “That’s the way towards our home, even if it’s going to take us a long, long time.”
“There are rations in the escape mod,” T’Oli says. “Don’t know how long they’ll last for humans, though.”
More nutrient goop, and the packets come in a variety of flavors with names I don’t understand. We haven’t eaten since Vimelia, since leaving the Clarity’s Dawn hideout deep beneath those pipes, so Viera and I take a moment to devour packets of chalky slime.
The filters, as if sensing the motions of our mouths, peel back their layers while we suck down the goop. T’Oli, for its part, smears a packet on its skin and, like water disappearing into a cloth, the Ooblot absorbs the meal.
“You’re really weird,” Viera says to T’Oli.
“I get that a lot.”
“Are you, uh, typical for your species?” Viera continues.
“I don’t know,” T’Oli replies, its eyestalks twisting into a slant. “I’ve never met another Ooblot before. I think I was the only one on Vimelia.”
“You didn’t grow up with any?” I can’t help but ask.
“Grow up?” T’Oli does that weird Ooblot laugh, with its skin slapping against itself. “I was grown, Kaishi. Made right there in Vimelia off of Sevora samples. They tried to host me, but I’d just melt away any openings when they tried. So then they threw me away.”
“That’s awful.” It’s all I can think of to say. “No wonder you wanted revenge.”
“Revenge?” T’Oli laughs again. “I just wanted purpose. Something to do, something with meaning. After slinking around the tubes for a long time, I found Clarity’s Dawn and they offered me a job. That’s all I wanted - to feel worthwhile. Don’t need more than that.”
We climb through the ash westward for hours. There’s nothing much we see, aside from the odd two and three-meter black pole. They stand as silent watchers, and while at first I think they’re trees - long dead, but still - when we happen to pass near one I take a closer look, brush away the thick grime coating it.
“Metal.”
T’Oli, who’s turned gray-black as the ash sticks to its flowing form, just blinks at the discovery. Viera, though, gets what I’m after.
“People lived here, once,” she says.
“Something did, anyway,” I reply.
But there’s no further answers waiting in that single pole, so we move on. Keep going until the ground dips and the ash, if anything, gets even thicker. Up to my calves now, and I’m noticing that it’s not all soft flakes. There’s bigger chunks brushing by my legs, and I slip every now and then when my foot lands on something not quite broken down, like stepping on a log hidden by forest leaves.
After the pole, Viera keeps her miner drawn, her head on a constant sweep around us. When I ask why, she says it makes her feel better.
Makes me feel better too.
Especially when we see the shadow in front of us. More a swirl of disturbed ash than anything, the distant cloud marks a line ahead, a trail where something passed.
“Could be a small breeze,” T’Oli says.
“No breeze is that small.” I start moving towards the trail. “Come on - if there’s something out here, I’d rather find it while it’s still light out.”
Viera agrees and the two of us break into a stumbling run, chasing the line of falling ash. I hope T’Oli’s following, but the Ooblot doesn’t make much noise, and it’s so much slower that I don’t even try to wait.
We’re kicking up so many of the gray flakes that T’Oli shouldn’t have trouble following anyway.
The trail leads us to a pit. Or a crater. It’s large enough, either way, for the far edges to disappear behind the fog’s obscuring mists. But we can see plenty of what’s below.
“Well there’s your proof,” Viera says, and we stare for a long moment at the alien structure nestled in the ash.
From what I can see, the building sprawls out in rounded fashion. A front portion angles towards us, with enough ash dug up to provide something of a stair from the pit’s edge down to what might have been a door once but is now a rusted portal to who knows where.
Beyond that opening, the building billows out, approaching and disappearing into the edges of the crater, though the ash covers so much of the structure that it’s hard to know how much of it is simply mounds of dirt.
Put simply, I think it’s huge. Bigger than the Vaos. Taller too. And it had clearly been the target of someone’s wrath.
The walls and ceiling we can see are pitted with rust, with chunks blown apart or missing altogether, as though bitten away by sharp teeth. Or burned off by a miner.
“Who do you think made this?” I ask.
“Being an expert on all things alien,” Viera says. “I have no idea.”
I crouch, give my legs a breather after the run. We don’t have unlimited rations. Taking the time to explore the building would put us even more at risk for getting anywhere habitable before we starved.
“Well that’s certainly unexpected,” T’Oli says as the Ooblot flows up behind us. “More and more mysteries. Have to say, this is all much more interesting than Sevora sewers.”
“T’Oli.” I brush off the Ooblot’s meandering words like a fly. “How long do you think it would take us to make it halfway around a planet Earth’s size?”
“At the speed we’re going?” T’Oli blinks its eyestalks. “We’ll be long dead by the time we get close to where the Sevora are.”
I nod. That’s what I needed to know.
“Then we’re going in t
here. Might be something we can use.”
“Might also get us very dead.” Viera shrugs. “Then again, I’ve been expecting my sudden demise for so long now that it’s not even scary anymore.”
“Happened to Malo,” I reply without thinking.
Viera only nods at that. I shut my eyes for a second. Take a slow breath.
Now’s not the time.
“Let’s go.”
So I jump off the edge, land on the ashen slope and skip along, feet remembering what it’s like to find holds and lose them again in a moment. There’s a certain joy to moving fast under my own power and it’s been too long. Even here, in this gray desolation, I manage to crack a smile and forget all the awfulness behind and ahead.
Only for a moment.
Viera yells for me to be careful, but I’m in my run and to the door before she’s started her descent. I look back, flash a smile, then wave for them to come down. Nothing’s jumped out of the door to scare me yet, and inside is only deep dark, so it’s obviously safe.
Or maybe, at this point, I just don’t care. T’Oli’s saying we’re going to starve long before we make it home, and everything around me is ruin, so I decide that I’m going to spend my last days smiling, laughing, trying to dig up what joy I can.
Malo would want that, I think.
T’Oli follows Viera, using the rivets made by the latter’s feet as pools to guide it slime-run towards me. Eventually, the three of us form up again outside the door, a rusted, bent thing that’s lost any element of security it once provided to this place.
“How about next time we go together?” Viera says. “There could have been something waiting here.”
“Then I would’ve taken care of it,” I reply, holding up my hands. “I know how to fight.”
Viera pats her miner. “Trust me when I say shooting’s much more effective.”
I shrug. “As the Empress, I declare my opinion correct.”
Viera rolls her eyes, but doesn’t argue the point.
Sometimes, authority has its benefits.
“Anybody have a light?” I ask, staring into the deep entry. “I don’t think Ignos is going to get much beyond that door.”
The great god isn’t doing much for keeping this side of the world bright anyway - the gray fog covers most things, and it’s been getting steadily dimmer as the day goes on. None of us are under any illusions that we’ll be spending the night somewhere in this blasted land, and all of us - T’Oli possibly excepted because Ooblot minds are, well, different - are hoping there’ll be somewhere in this building we can use for shelter.
But nobody’s eager to embark on a pitch-black chase after an unknown creature.
“I’ll lead,” T’Oli says. “I won’t be able to see any better than you, but I’m very hard to kill.”
Viera snorts, but we give T’Oli’s plan the go-ahead and the Ooblot doesn’t make anymore words about it, and slides into the door.
As the Ooblot moves, T’Oli describes the surroundings, remarking on the cold flat floor, the constant broken shards of glass, swept-in ash, and evidence of long-dead devices now taking up their decaying places along the sides.
Viera and I - with me in last place - step slowly behind the Ooblot, following its directions as our sight gradually decreases until all I’ve got is a right-hand grip in Viera’s own to guide me.
The sheer darkness calls me back to the moments before Ignos entered my mind for the first time, and I almost laugh at the contradictions. There, then, I was expecting to meet a god or his gift, find a way to save my people or bring them prosperity. Here, I’m marching with fatal determination, moving forward because staying still means a slow, pointless death.
“This remind you of home?” I ask Viera, remembering that the Lunare came from beneath the mountains.
“Our tunnels aren’t dark,” Viera replies and her voice sounds loud in the quiet hall. “We plant glow-worms, and feed them. The way their light reflects off of the rocks and pools of water is beautiful, fascinating. I miss it.”
As if responding to Viera’s remembrance, we turn a corner and notice wisps of light in front of us. Blue curls coming out of a round door not far ahead, ones that silhouette T’Oli’s twin eyestalks and make it seem as though we’re walking towards some portal to a dark beyond.
A person stands in the middle of the domed room. They’re the source of the glow - or rather, a sapphire light beneath them is. It’s a man, wearing what seems to be a series of striped bands all across his body. Because everything is in that blue color-scheme, I can’t tell if the man’s outfit is supposed to be a rainbow display or a black-and-white affair.
Which is good, because there are other things I ought to be focusing on. Namely, why the man’s right eye seems to have slid down his face, so that it rests just on top of his cheek. He only has one ear - the left - though I don’t see any evidence of a scar. Thick hair covers his head, unmoved by the subtle breeze slipping through the place.
“If you aren’t the ugliest man I’ve ever seen,” Viera announces as we head into the room.
She’s already drawn her miner, aimed and pointed it at the man. I think she’s happy we’re facing, for once, another human. An enemy she knows.
“Hello,” the man says, speaking in the same universal language as everyone else. “Welcome to my home.”
Malo’s Charre lingo, apparently, didn’t make it to this side of the world.
Otherwise, the man’s voice is an even-keel, though it fuzzes at the edges, as if someone ran the ends of his words through a rushing river.
“Your home could use some cleaning,” I say, stepping into the room around Viera, who’s slips me a ‘stay-back’ look that I ignore.
The man doesn’t seem to have any weapons, doesn’t look aggressive with his smallish hands by his sides. And with Viera covering him, I can’t imagine anything he could do that wouldn’t end in his smoking corpse on the ground.
Until I notice that his feet aren’t on it. The ground, I mean. The man’s floating a little above the floor. I check his shoes - but his feet are only wrapped in those same bands. None of the magnetic flying boots used by the Flaum back on Vimelia.
“It’s an image,” T’Oli says. “This thing isn’t really here. Which, all things considered, seems like a smart decision.”
The man’s head swivels towards the Ooblot, and his face shifts into a sad, if disturbing, smile. “I haven’t really been here in a very long time.”
Behind the man, spaced out around the room, are piles of broken equipment. Shattered glass and bent, burnt metal couple with deep grooves in the stone floor to tell a story of disaster. The filter keeps me from knowing what it smells like down here, for which I’m thankful. Wreckage like this usually means death, and bodies left to rot tend to make unpleasant finds.
There are, however, two other doors splitting off to parts unknown.
“Looks like you’re here right now?” Viera’s asking.
“It’s like Nasiya,” I say. “Just a picture. The real question is, where are you?”
“Dead,” the man says. “I’ve been dead for far longer than you’ve been alive.”
There’s a brief second of silence, before I bust out a long sigh. “Of course, after everything we’ve seen, why not a ghost too?”
Ignos, my god, supposedly casts reflections at times, sends back past relatives to glimpse the present, to meet with their chosen family and pass along wisdom. Not something I’d ever experienced, but seeing as the priests claimed Ignos sent these visions along in times of need, getting a ghost for myself now would make sense.
“A ghost?” the man shakes his head. “No. Merely a recording. For any who survived the cancellation.”
“You’re throwing terms out there without a lot of context,” I say.
“You don’t know?” The man doesn’t put any shock into his voice, but I gather he would if he could. “You are not survivors?”
“We are,” Viera says. “We’d like to stay that wa
y, too.”
“Then you should know that this place is not safe,” the man replies. “You are at risk, here. And you should leave.”
I gesture at the other doors leading further in, “We need supplies. A way to get to the other side of the world. You have that?”
“My data has been corrupted, survivor,” the man says. “I have no inventory to give you. If, however, you helped me, I could perhaps find you a way.”
Being told by a shimmering, distorted mistake of a creature that our survival depends, maybe, on helping it is not on the list of things I want to hear. I’m the one, no, we’re the ones that need help, not some avatar that freely admits it’s dead.
But what choice do we have? Say no? Venture back into the ash lands and starve slowly in the choking gray?
“What do we need to do?” I ask, T’Oli and Viera apparently deferring to me for once.
The ghost turns and gestures with its right hand, and from it leaps a series of small stars stretching forth to the closer of the two doors. The line hovers at my eyeline, their blue sparks twinkling motes of fire.
“Follow them,” the man says. “Find the core, and open the vents.”
“Well, if that doesn’t clear things up,” Viera mutters, and we start off.
The blue line peters out at the edge of the room, not even lasting us past the door. I glance back at the man, wondering if the ghost realizes his guide-posting is rather lacking, but all I get is a blank stare back.
“Guess this is what we have,” I say and down we go, once more into the dark.
T’Oli again assumes its leadership role, courageously descending us along a wide, flat ramp that curls, every so often, back against itself as it winds further and further. Viera remarks that stairs would take up less space, and I’m inclined to agree.
“Not every species can step.” T’Oli makes the observation in the same slap-tone it always does, as if unaware of what it’s saying.
T’Oli’s remark, though, cracks a certain code. I’d not thought of another alien species making it to Earth until that moment. That one might have been here far earlier, might have made this whole structure answers and creates questions at a rate that threatens to overwhelm me.