Plunging upward at tens of thousands of feet per second. The gauges and dials are spinning and flashing mindlessly around the two, beeping and breaking out into blaring alarms. He struggles to shift himself closer to her, he clamors for the adrenaline and for her, sharing, rejoicing in the thrill of being near death and the uncertainty of living through it. Seeing a joyous look of lunacy inside resounding resplendence in the eyes of her expression, enraged in elation and roaring in the face of fear like a wild lion. She barely manages to turn her head enough to see him through the corner of her wide opened eyes, to see him struggling as though to save his life to reach her.
The pilot masks made for this high a flight went unnoticed by either in their haste to escape. The rapid ascent is red lining her nervous system and draining the red from her cheeks, she's graying out, soaring so fast they feel as though they're being sucked into a tunnel of sensory deprivation that’s overwhelming her mind and body. Now narrowly streaking between towering translucent twisters that violently dominate the ether just under the top of the auroral halo. Reaching for a hundred thousand miles downward, as translucent blues and purplish twisters spanning a thousand miles across their churning crowns. The rocket comes close enough to see the violent vertices are actually suspending the halo standing in the sky it's formed of. Their two souls are extolling excitedly for the ring of radiating noctilucent blues above and before them, engulfing the cruiser more with each foot flown. Growing greater in size until all she can see is a violently flowing vaporous ocean of brightening auroral blue lights brilliantly instilling a sense of in awe. The two of them awash in the euphoria of their escape of diving into the depths of this places sky. Escaping from the reach of the Ribbits, and out of the shadowy Shallows and the claustrophobic catwalks and ladders of the Narrows.
Scathingly close to near death by suffocation while soaring through an expansive open expanse of spiraling skies. Feeling alive to live, again with him. All happening over nearly a minute while flying faster than reflex can react, then disappearing into the ocean of the blue halo before a blink of her eye.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Time passed
Floating with the flame of a hot air balloon over a rustic scene from a thousand feet up, of knolls and grass and trees, where the streams are of fluctuating translucent waves of the lightest reds and darkest blues she’d yet seen. The trees are of the light spectrum split into the shapes of trunks and branches and leaves. Everything she seen was casting the scenes of television as their shadows. Each blade of bluish grass oscillates, collectively blanketing the hills that stretch the scenes of the shadows of trees.
Then running through pastures until seeing pixels passing, amassing into patches of shade and the colorful forms and figures of a much bigger picture. Vast fields of pixel corn, whose each cob was of speckled color. They were lost in a swath of static corn stocks beating against their bodies, and being the only thing they could see for miles and hours more of moving forward. Finding a freshly painted red barn in broad day, which they later snuck into for shelter from the increasingly dour pastures passing into a sour spell of twister country. From the roof they seen the whole picture of passing pixel corns swaying in gusts of wind. Mixing their pixelated kernels and melting into the makings of her mind’s eye, much like seeing sights in the subjectivity of clouds. Watching a while the fields conjured into blobs of colors and shapes, rising from fuzz into moving angles and objects, and partial bodies and faces. She sits on the roof next to the weathervane thinking there's nothing like nature to give a glimpse into yourself through its fractal forms. A twister threw a tantrum miles away, devastating the corn fields into its category three tear. Another arose, spiraling through the sky to devour the ground, then another appeared and another each ripping swathes of static stalks and pixel corn into the air.
How they were sleeping in hay and petting the goats and cows. Of wanting to pet the horses, but Cider said not to, that they’ll wake the farmers. The next day they were chasing chickens when the elderly farmer couple was out and about in their rusted pickup. The two scrounged their jam, skimmed the milk of a cow Anna affectionately named Sally, though spewing the fresh cream from her lips. For three days and nights they stay up hanging onto the weathervane while watching to see where the sun rose and fell. Being caught by the mustachioed farmer and his wife, but welcomed and treated as though in a bed and breakfast. With the best blueberry pie to ever fill their mouths, still remembers how the berries melting over their tongues like hot fudge. Leaving a few days later with warm goodbyes and references to the little they know of each other and the laughter shared in their short time of knowing one another.
Another place was pitch black but for the structures and peoples. As if everything was constructed by the people out of the oblivion for them to live in. The clothes and personalities and architecture were fashioned by constructing contrasts to what existed last. A theme that repeated through its entire culture, illustrated by its contrasting all that was present previous to the most recently constructed structures and social norms. And the people, unsatisfied with this, developed fantastic personalities that contradict the culture of their generational predecessors. Their civilities and clothing, persona’s growing over generations to contest and stand out against one another, structured to contrast each other. Contrast itself was eventually seen as a similarity, so they all began dressing and acting exactly the same to be different. For whatever reason they had a lot of zeppelins.
And then bike riding through a sleepy little town lined with antiques older than the wood walls of the shops they were kept in. Searching for his smokes and coffee and chocolate for her on old heavy bicycles, rolling in red and white mushrooms that melted away into viridescent volumes of azure apple orchards. Another place where stars fell from the heavens without growing a bit and floated to explode like tiny firecrackers just feet from her face. Still admiring gemstones made of vapor in a vacuum. Standing under the arches of Elephaltel, and it's society of supreme pageantry, solar jewelry and daytime designed evening gowns.
Of when sunlight beamed through the canopy onto wetted branches of twisting moss clothed trees. How they peeled the sunlight from the bark and leaves, thinking of how it was dew soaked and slimy, like little holding oily cloths. The taste of sour pastries and sweet tarts, that were neither sweet nor sour. Though reminiscing of chunky peanut butter and ice cream, which have been strange to find anywhere but home.
Remembering an Alto whose public transportation is remarkably similar to the attractions of an amusement park. Of their massive interconnecting merry go rounds allowing a person to reach the other side of the city by hopping from one to the next. Every person looked like a person from a freak show, strong men, bearded women, tattoos, and piercings, and every street was bustling with palm readers, mystics and crowds clamoring around snake oil salesmen. How the thousands of Ferris wheels were actually elevators, and how the tea cups and merry go rounds seemed to be spinning as cogs of a much larger machine. They called the factories haunted houses, and had the best house of mirrors she’d ever been in. It was big enough to encompass every surface of an entire borough in reflective glass. Being at a convention displaying the technologies for the world of their tomorrow, it so said on the banner anyway. A world squandered on lavish comfort and vane convenience, while being a society on the brink of discovering their own sensory serum, that will pacify them like eucalyptus soothes koalas to usher them into an everlasting spiritual ecstasy. The world’s fair of another was attacked by an array of lasers during a valiant rebellion by the robots of a different Alto, plotting to save the household appliances from their displays.
Of the trolleys, trains and tunnels of nights on top and days on the lamb, in hovels, and times when flush with more cash and jewels than a holy man can carry. Of filthy the faces and the gritted teeth of factory workers who only smiled at the sight of their wives and children. Being in bell towers towering overlooking living fields, and of counting sleeping sheep under elec
tric tree canopies. Becoming accustomed to waking up in a different bed, a different circumstance when she opens her eyes. Under different suns and stars after almost every other rise of her head from sleep. Then thinking of purple suns and their blue shadows shining through a neon lit nights, enlivened with sips from psilocybin soda fountains and Dadaist planning.
Then coming to an Alto of the evening news being broadcast on screens, anywhere you can fit a screen big enough to see a picture there is one. A never ending stream of thousands of television shows broadcast onto every seeable surface. She particularly enjoyed when all the shows went into intermission in unison and played the same orchestral sense saturating synesthetic symphony strumming through her ears and stroking her nervous system. Then back to the overwhelming flood, drowning of media babble washing out the viewers thoughts and making it almost impossible to think. After a while hearing things, auditory hallucinations out of the thousands of speaking tongues, and seeing abstract patterns instead of anything understandable to be understood. Some she thought, were actually quite enjoyable when she was able to focus her sanity well enough to navigate them. Learning to use the onslaught of media, otherwise a diversion from her own intuition. You get the sense it's useless nonsense unless you can focus in on the story enough to see what you’re seeing when you look. On one of the channels they've seen flashing yellow symbols, then themselves on the InterAlto nightly news as wanted posters. Her face next to his is of her gawking with open mouth, as though she’s watching an ice cream cone fall from her hands, which she was when they took the sneaky photograph.
“That face?” she scolded the screen, feeling undersold as a wanted woman by it. Cider teased her about as a video of her knocking down an old man plays, and replays in a loop. The news anchors repeatedly called her villainous for it, but not for the deeds of living devilishly with him, and hardly a mention of the smash and grab jewelry store heist that she was actually fleeing from. With the caption “WANTED 'Carrots' of the notorious juicebox gang”. Showing Cider’s face with a photo booth smile, and a lot of zeros under his name as the bounty of his life or death. There were a few other wanted posters that faded back into a frenzy of faces arguing over the actions of the color yellow, and the shapes it chooses to be. Asking why are bees yellow and not any trees. The debate then went unending for several days until reaching the conclusion that trees are in fact yellow, even more yellow than bees.
Yellow as was the massive standing sun of the waterless Alto the two are presently in. With its caravels floating in layers of atmosphere through Panama Canal sized causeways between lighthouses lined up like skyscrapers to form the cityscape's skyline. Each building is like an islet anchored to the ground hundreds of feet below them. In an unpainted wood walled room made up of planks of wood pilfered from ship wreckage. Staring out from the thirtieth story with her head on the window sill and a steady supply of opium for the last six weeks straight. Only while her hand heals of course. Lucidly delusional as she watched the largest ships sail highest in the air, tanker sized galleons with cannons constantly blazing through days and nights of incessant skirmishing and plundering. Engulfing the sky with the flashing flame of constant cannon fire. Bursts of gun powder spill into gusts and smearing across the bottoms of puffy pinkish clouds. Some ships and lighthouses, and fortresses hold so many riches they regularly rain jewels and precious metals from their windows when swept by the currents of battle.
No structure is unblemished by the cannons craters and char burns of the pirates constant pilfering and savage sieges. Beneath are merchant ships and smaller vessels of the common levels, and beneath them are the riff raff surviving in the barnacled wreckage. Usually bobbing about, scavenging on crude rafts made of anything they can salvage from what sinks from above. Leather boots and brass buckles of black of heart swashbucklers are everywhere, treading chalky white skies and clouds of spent gunpowder. Grand chandeliers and pianos of the age of discovery are strewn about the shanties and chateaus of this society. The ground is littered with and built on the rotting barnacled wreckage of generations of fallen plunderers who themselves had their lives plundered by their trade. There are fish and squids and sharks and whales swimming freely through the air everywhere she looks, whenever she looks. The air is sweet and salty and always scented with garlic. Garlic keeps the carnivorous zombie dolphins away from your person and dwelling. Pearls are the most valuable things in existence here, of course here it's also a slang for a woman. More accurately a woman’s...clam.
Many tiered stone balconies battered to broken teeth wrapped with burned overgrowth, always with guards, watching with muskets out walls of battle scar and the bloodshed stained wood and stone. A few times they ventured on row boat up to the vermilion cannon thunder above to plunder fortresses and churches in the heat of the fray, much for the thrill of it. Though mostly she's puffing on an opium pipe and drinking peppermint flavored poppy milk envisioning she's soaring through the skies. Her imagination as the vessel for her senses to feel everything she can suppose seeing clearly. Walking the plank and splashing into her subconscious with each blink of her deeply intoxicated mind, romanticizing the adventure the plunder of shiny things along with the aspirations of a pirates life. All with their own muzzles and sabers, weapons they have all have, and used to run the next man through.
She drools for hours at a school of illuminated flare bellied jelly fish rising through the atmosphere like a volcanic eruption seen in time lapse through her blinking. Though admiring most of all the nearly invisible atmosphere flowing like waterfalls when one layer drips up or down into the next. Reminding her of the skies they’ve soared through almost a month's worth of days awake ago. The ceaseless rowing of oars through the ether, always accompanied by a captain’s roars for morale, And of pirate crews chanting, carries on forever through their air. Sounding as natural to the ear as the salts of the sea that fill your nose when close to the coast.
Fantasizing about what she would wear if she were a swashbuckling pirate queen. Supposing she would have a peg leg. Then that she would rather have both her legs and sea weathered heavy brown leather boots that thump and shake the sand from wood and the bones of her foes as she walks with commanding. Of the glimmering metal riches and red cotton coat and black cross bones across her hat and a noose around her neck from when she jumped the gallows. Shouting from the captain’s deck of a mighty oak caravel with a chain smoking Cider over her shoulder, as a drunk indigo feathered parrot repeating her demands for more treasure lads and lasses, more treasure!. Blue and white feathers in her hair as Anna the pirate queen, no Carrots the chivalrous they will call her, as she will be more civil than any knight, though more savage than any conquistador. Seeing herself with a heavy saber slashing heroically and shooting a blunderbuss while villainously grimacing when blowing away other pirate goons.
Laughing to herself lowly, smoking, with her eyes low and her mind slowed to feel what she sees clearly. Wondering whether herself and he are just plain train cart tramps drifting through the InterAltos, or the captains of their own tides like she sees in her mind. Wondering of where they will wash up next and of what she'll do when they get there.
Then drifting off into a tranquility inside herself, thinking of the sense eclipsing sight of galaxies when she was sitting on a wooden bench in the light of a park brimming with life. Overlooking a cityscape of nightly nightmarish orange lights rising from the inky blacktop beneath them as dots and clusters resembling the stars shining through the sky above. There were billions of suns in one glance at the star saturated sky. Hole molecular clouds and star clusters smaller to the eye than a grain of sand, colliding. Far enough away to see galactic cannibalism unfold to its end in just a few hours. Only leaving the comfort of the floating pirates paradise of treasure and lives raining from sinking caravels, because of the aggressive lice and sea sky faring foot long mice.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Passing time
She's been waking up in a new place almost every time she o
pens her eyes, across so many Altos for so long alarm clocks and time of day became irrelevant to her, eyes closed and eating. Presently trying to be on time for a specific train to catch, one of the InterAlto map’s multitude of rail lines that will bring them closer to home, her home. It’s extremely strenuous though, searching through the InterAlto rail map which they’ve been doing now for days and nights with magnifying glass and microscopes. Most of the stations are small enough to fit in the pulp fibers of the paper they're printed on. The volumes of webbing pastel pink stringing patterns of InterAlto rail paths are almost indistinguishable from the papers thread. Every time she fumbles enough to find a ride going their way, the train they're looking for is pulling away from them by the time they're running to catch it.
Hazily staring through the steam rising off her morning coffee, stirring it and adding milk to see it swirl. She likes to think of it as starting the a day with a sip of stars swirling into a black hole. Anna eating a chocolate chip marble muffin resembling the coffee trimmed marble cream floors of the grand lobby they're presently sitting in. The dining room is sparsely filled but for volumes of dust miming micro molecular clouds gaseously glittering in yellowed morning light pouring through the windows from the west. Just outside is a nest of reddish breasted robins she enjoys spotting through the scene she sees through the thick glass of arched windows. Sitting across Cider sloppily feasting on a plate of greasy eggs Benedict. She's been making a habit of having her breakfast as early as she can, enjoying the ambiance of the Big Pig hotel’s empty dining room. One of millions sprung up around a pantime station that is a massive InterAlto hub with rows of platforms stretching farther into the horizon than any sea she’s ever seen. Every morning she asks the maitre de to open the heavy twelve foot tall chocolate brown drapes to see the scenes of the immeasurably big pinkish stone platforms stretching from one side of the sky to the other.
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