Sisyphean
Page 24
I was crouched down low beneath powerful gusts that blew across the land in a body covered with black skin, moving backward little by little on four bent legs. A steady succession of dried-up corpses appeared from the sand and began crawling along beside me. There were also some who were blown over to me by powerful gusts of wind.
They were all of them comrades. Though tormented by starvation and thirst, we all sought one another’s bodies, becoming tangled up together like a ball of yarn. As we switched from partner to partner, we grew smaller and more fragile. At last, we all gathered together and burrowed into the sand. Each of us was enveloped in shell and became an egg. Then, one by one, we were sucked inside … and became … our parents. Our bodies tangled together with those of comrades who had come to us. We pushed pointed reproductive organs deeply into one another, sucked out one another’s seed, and then came apart—
At some point, our skins had faded to white and become covered in blisters, and we had become able to return to our parents’ wombs while we were yet naked newborns. Our skeletal and muscular structure changed, making it difficult to move about in a hunched-over crouch, so that at last we raised our upper bodies and stood on two legs.
From out of the sandstorm, a dozen or so comrades came carrying the gargantuan body of a dun-colored female.
It was Pancestor.
They laid her down on the ground. Her skin was covered in blisters, just like ours.
A redness began to appear in Pancestor’s skin. I thought I could see her fingertips and face spasming just slightly, and then, with sudden, halting movements, she rose to her feet.
One by one, we climbed up her blistered flesh and clung tightly to the soft meat enveloping her chest, her stomach, her sides, and her thighs. We attached ourselves, and there we withered, dangling from her body, the very image of tumors. When the swelling went down and it was no longer possible to tell where the blisters had been, I looked down on the sight of the epidermis covering my body. It was starting to melt, to sink in, to flow away.
I—who had become Pancestor—looked around at my surroundings with my eye-cover lowered slightly. The sandy plain stretched out all around, unbounded—and I saw a flat, black ovoid. It was a barrow. Sunk partially into the ground, it was giving off a faint white smoke. Starting from one side, a long furrow in the ground stretched off into the distance.
As the surface of my body continued to liquefy, I started walking backward again.
I stood in front of the scorched black barrow, and a part of its outer shell slid open, exposing a filmy membrane with a vertical rent. I pulled open that tear, and when I was sealed inside, my body began falling apart, spiraling away, as if decomposing—or maybe I was being carried off by the dozen or so children who had divided off of me … and wrapped in a membrane to serve as my burial shroud … and entombed within the scorched black barrow—and eventually all I could hear was the rhythmic beat of my pump-shaped organ. That, too, grew gradually more distant, and at last everything ceased.
An instant later, I was flung out into a void of utter blackness.
I was shuddering so hard that my carapace seemed ready to come apart at the seams—for just a fleeting instant, my body resumed the shape of Radoh. Through my internal organs, I felt a darkness so overwhelming it could blot out death itself. It was expanding outward with incredible speed, and a primal fear of its all-encompassing vastness engulfed me.
Suddenly, a giant boulder appeared before my eyes. It was coming toward me, rotating. I cringed away from it, and it simply passed me by. After that, multiple boulders appeared one after another, just missing the place where I stood as they flew past.
At some point, the entirety of the blackness had taken on varying shades due to innumerable points of light that clustered thickly in some places and were scattered and more diffusely in others.
Looming into view from the corner of my eye was a huge, bright ball of red light that reminded me of a blob of magma. A variety of vastly smaller jewels—some larger than others, some tan and some blue-green—were moving in concentric circles around this ball of light, each rotating as it did so. Counted from the glowing sphere, the first, the second, and third of these blue-green, white-swirled jewels came into the foreground, and a powerful impulse that I can only describe as a homing instinct stabbed through my entire being. In the blink of an eye, the ball of light grew distant, and the points of light stretched out, beginning to form a radial pattern. After a sensation of having my body stretched out to infinity, I came back to myself and was staring at the luster of a small crystalline object.
Tiny bubbles floated upward. There was a sound of air entering and leaving through spiracles.
At long last, I was back—or I should have been. Instead, I was turning into a boulder, holding on tightly to the plain of the Hellblaze and struggling against the gusts of wind and the rimlight.
Was I about to experience the hell of that seemingly infinite process of speciation all over again? I nearly fainted at the thought, yet somehow another part of me deep down was submerged in powerful emotions that defied all description or metaphor.
Before my eyes were my fellow boulders, casting dark shadows on the ground. Beyond them, the vast Mudsea—a murky ocean the color of dried leaves—spread out all around. The surface of that sea, which seemed to swell with the rising of each wave, was swaying amid ripples of intense heat.
To escape from the light of the Rimblaze, we had embarked on a journey across countless generations, and here at last, at the uttermost edge of the continent, we had arrived on a beach facing the Mudsea.
I whistled at one of my companions. There was no reply. Was it just a rocky mountain? With that thought in mind, I strained my eyes and saw one side of his outer shell flake off in large pieces. I pulled out my rootlimbs and drew nearer. Inside the body cavity that had been exposed, organs were flattening out as they dried. Off in the distance, the body of another of my comrades caved in upon itself.
Everyone was whistling to one another. Together with those others who yet survived, I began advancing toward the Mudsea. The shale that covered the shoreline cracked and split beneath our weight. Our heavy, boulder-shaped bodies sank deep into the mire. The heat that was trapped inside leached steadily away. I breathed out slowly from the many holes that had opened in my outer shell.
Time passed, and with its passage succulent plants and fungi adhered to my body’s surface. Lower gloambugs that had survived by living underground began burrowing into the holes and cracks of my shellite. After several generations, my comrades and I became able to exchange gases underwater through symbiosis with them. I was beginning to drift in the Mudsea’s verilucent layer. Undermud, where the light of the Rimblaze was weakened to a tolerable degree, a diverse ecosystem unfurled around me, where there was no shortage of prey.
We, who had been freed from the Hellblaze and from our own body weight as well, grew fat, and there was nothing to stop us from growing fatter and fatter still.
2
The feeling that I was floating in muddy water vanished unexpectedly, and together with the pressure against my carapace, the original sensations of my body came back to life. I could see folds of pleated flesh right in front of me. Most likely, there was not an inch of my body not enveloped in them. Even though I shouldn’t be able to remember, I think this was like the time I spent in my father’s body.
Had I truly come back for real this time? Or was I about to be sent somewhere again?
I drew up my body and braced myself, then the fleshy pleats began to writhe powerfully, and vacant, drawn-out moans echoed forth. It was the Archlearner’s voice apparently. And I couldn’t blame him. The theory that he’d espoused and propounded up till now had just been completely overturned. And it might even be that his consciousness had been tampered with, making him send research teams to the continent.
But even if that were so, why had Castellum Raondo
stolen the crystal? Had it wanted to recover its memories of that fearsome darkness and of the jewels that floated therein?
“I can’t blame you for not understanding what those images meant; inside the castellum there’s practically no need for astronomy.”
Archlearner Meimeiru …
“But the Seat of Learning does know something about it. Those are the galactic coordinates of the world and its Rimblaze—where we are. And most likely, they show the position of Pancestor’s homeworld as well.”
There it was again—that intense impulse that pierced right through me … To grant her wish to go back to that place? Impossible. But … could that also be the reason for the increased potassium nitrate production?
“If that’s truly the case, I’d have to say it’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”
What do you mean by that?
“Given our present level of potassium nitrate, there won’t be enough propulsive force. It’s no easy thing to escape from a gravity well. It’s probably going to be impossible.”
I was still dumbfounded when the pleated flesh enveloping my body began to twist. It slowly turned me around as it pushed me out of the Archlearner’s brain. I started to fall forward, but the lunming bugs caught me with their long pole-legs and lowered me gently to the floor.
After the major operation of transporting the huge Shutohroh tribesmen was complete, the holes in the riptrench were sealed, and the two castellae broke off from one another.
By this point, the folk of Castellum Raondo had to the last man moved over to Castellum Saruga.
Robbed of the homes in which they’d expected to live out the rest of their lives, many had lost heart or were filled with anger. With the population having nearly doubled inside Castellum Saruga, there was no end of squabbles with the original residents of the overcrowded castellum. Since namas-machina were not approved for medicinal use there, every clinic was filled with the moans of addicts suffering withdrawal symptoms.
In spite of it all, that night—
Yes, it was night. At least for castle folk, it was. But Castellum Raondo must have been floating up near the surface, bathed in the blazing light of Skyrise.
Everyone in the castellum had shut themselves up in their familiar—or perhaps still strange and unfriendly—apartments and were huddling close together with family and friends, straining their elbows as one. I, too, was together with Ro and the children.
Earlier than predicted, the muffled sound of an explosion boomed from above. Intermittent rumblings gradually became more powerful.
What we were told afterward was that Castellum Raondo, unable to break free of the water’s surface, had sunk into the depths of the trench, belching out hot bubbles of cannonsmoke. The attack by Castellum Sosoga had caused mudleaks, and the castellum had lost much of its strength.
As if clinging to a lifeline, everyone listened to the sounds of the castellum as it vanished into the distant depths.
There are some who say they can hear it still.
Chapter 6:
Latter Days in
Castellum Saruga
Much of Castellum Raondo’s Seat of Learning and Seat of Defense were merged with their counterparts in Castellum Saruga. As might be expected, this gave rise to numerous misunderstandings and conflicts.
Although Archlearner Meimeiru had achieved a historic accomplishment in discovering the origin of castellae, he acknowledged the error of the theory he had championed and retired from active service, becoming a materials depository that stored a portion of the galaxy’s coordinates.
It was also learned that a vast store of additional information was hidden inside Pancestor’s crystal, and the learners of each ministry began a joint effort to study it. Thanks to this, it soon became clear that those troublesome tumors being found of late in the brains of castle folk were being caused by some sort of wave emitted by the crystal. When a certain learner connected his own consciousness to the crystal’s stored information, what he saw was the familiar, daily life that the castle folk lived in their riptrench. By the end of the study, they understood that all of Castellum Saruga—populace included—was steadily being copied into the crystal’s information space like a finely detailed sculpture and overwriting the crystal’s original information in the process.
Unable to find any way of restraining it, the Seat of Learning decided at a great convocation to return the crystal to the barrow in which it was found. A large number of Shutohroh tribesmen were asked to memorize its most important information, and then, due to my “prior familiarity” with the Hellblaze, I was half-forced into accepting the job of taking it back.
All the details of that incredibly harsh journey have been set down in another memoir.
I still haven’t shaken that strange feeling of emptiness I had as I re-enshrined the crystal within the barrow … the feeling that I had surrendered my very self.
When I returned to Castellum Saruga, the degree of Interministerial Learner was bestowed on me, based on former-Archlearner Meimeiru’s recommendation and my successful completion of the mission to return the crystal. I began to mediate in the research of all the ministries.
Everyarc, I commuted to the Seat of Learning, visiting each of the ministries and often passing Noi along the way. In a small rented room in a nearby clifftown, I lived with Ro and the children as a family.
The mold and the grime washed off of Ro in the bugbath, and she at least stopped looking like an old woman, though scars from the many troubles she’d endured became visible in detail on her carapace.
The children were always begging for stories. Even if all I did was open my journal to a random page and start reading, they would always be thrilled. Their favorites were the scenes where they were being named. Lately, they’d even started making up stories of their own and not once or twice had put on skits for me.
There are a lot of people who insult me behind my back, calling me “Radoh Namas-machina,” and there are a lot as well who pity me, saying I’ve gone buggy in the head.
Maidun Reproducing Pharmaceuticals, unable to get permits for relocating its facilities, was dissolved. There are rumors, though, that the Zafutsubo have formed an underground organization and are selling namas-machina on the black market.
At the Ministry of Castellum Contemplation, my work involved assisting in experiments that attempted to make contact with Castellum Saruga. At the Ministries of Welfare Contemplation and of Archaeological Contemplation, I checked the results of their research against one another. At the Ministry of Legal Contemplation, I submitted materials for their meetings, and during my breaks I made the rounds of each ministry’s aromaterial depository, digging through the aromaterials moved over from Castellum Raondo. Everyarc goes by at a hectic pace.
During the prerise of just such an arc, Ro, lying in the danglebed, failed to wake up. There had been no sign of anything amiss.
“How long has she been like this?” Dr. Saromi asked after rushing over.
I couldn’t comprehend his meaning.
“All I can think,” he continued, “is that she must have died years ago.”
Ro’s body cavity, he said, was all shriveled up inside, as if it had been dried out, with little holes everywhere.
At last, I found Castellum Giri’s POW list. It was what I had been looking for as I had been digging through all those aromaterial depositories. In the midst of the bulleted text, I found her name: Ro Namas-machina. Besides that, her name appeared on a list of workers who had provided treatment for Castellum Giri’s wounded soldiers. Immediately following the war, she had at least been treated as a human being. I took this evidence and submitted it to the Ministry of Legal Contemplation.
She became the first namas-machina in the history of either castellum to be given funerary rites as a person. Even now, she circulates among us in the form of a few dozen shellcoins. Thanks to that, I
unexpectedly meet her again from time to time.
But for now, this is nothing more than a special exemption, a kind of honorary castellum citizenship given to the dead; it’s not as if any living namas-machina have received rights as castle folk. There’s still work to be done.
I’ve even been teased by some people who tell me, “Next thing you know, you’ll be wanting to give castellum citizenship to castellae.”
Although many different experiments for communicating with Castellum Saruga have been attempted, none have yet borne fruit.
Every once in a while though, I’ll get a reverb from an unknown location.
At such times, I nod in silent agreement and then close the lidshell.
Fragment:
Exile
There appeared before
The dregs of
Chapter 1:
Ordinary Days
Hisauchi was headed down.
Eight, seven, six … Inside the elevator, he stood watching as an indicator light moved sideways through the row of floor numbers.