“You haven’t paid me a visit since the Mars.” She took in their surroundings. A warm breeze slipped through the trees and sweet birdsong trilled from all directions. “The last time I woke up in a strange place with you, young man, it was much scarier than this. I recall you were trying to intimidate me.”
“Did I?”
“I woke to find the ship’s doctor dead on the floor. My first meal as an Alpha. I don’t imagine that was your intent.”
“No.”
She looked down at her dress again. “This is pretty. It could be a bridal dress, except the baby bump doesn’t quite work, does it? That would be such scandal in the old world.”
“I need to speak with you about the new world.”
She ignored him. “The first place we met…it felt like Hell. Lava. Heat. Dante cliches. What do you call this place?”
“The Nexus.”
“It feels like we’re being watched. Did you come alone?”
“I’m never alone. The trees are watching. And there’s The Way of Things.”
“Hmph.” Shiva gestured in the air, as if trying to conjure something. “Do you stay awake at all?”
“Sometimes I sleepwalk. I need to speak with you about the new world.”
“So you said.” Shiva gestured again and this time a monarch butterfly appeared out of the air and fluttered into her palm. “I ask if you’re ever awake because lucid dreaming is so…godlike. I know a lot about feeling godlike. It’s intoxicating. It’s better than any drug. When I eat….” She sighed. “It’s euphoric.”
The monarch fluttered its wings and turned into a purple butterfly. Shiva smiled, pleased with her creation.
“You do it at will. The lucid dreaming, I mean. Why ever wake up? Why not starve yourself into a coma and stay where you can do anything you like, at least until your body dries up and dies? It would be safer than coming anywhere near me.”
The little butterfly in Shiva’s hand glowed neon green, then midnight blue, then obsidian. “If I were you, Jaimie Spencer, I would definitely go find an abandoned mattress store and pick out a nice, comfy bed. Dream of bikini girls and happy teddy bears while you can. When I meet you in the real world — ” Shiva closed her fist with a crunch.
But when God needs a plot
“I can’t see the future, Shiva, but The Way of Things can. It says I need to negotiate with you. If we can come to an agreement, we’ll both probably live.”
Fingers of blood stretched through the fabric of Shiva’s dress until the entire gown bled crimson. “Probably? That’s all you have to offer?” She dropped the butterfly’s crushed body at her feet.
“The future isn’t set. Not yet. Do as I ask and I’ll allow you and your baby to live.” Jaimie focused on the butterfly for a moment. Its body rearranged and grew larger in a blink. Jaimie colored it indigo. Its broad wings now had two bright white eyes that blinked, slowly and asynchronously. The insect fluttered up to alight on the boy’s shoulder.
“The Way of Things talks about paths and probabilities,” Jaimie said. “Every day, we stand at a fork in the road, choosing the future. You’re standing at such a place now.”
Shiva smiled, looking amused but unconvinced. “So? What are my choices? What are the paths?”
“Don’t join forces with Misericordia and you’ll survive the apocalypse. More importantly, your baby will live.”
“More important than me? That’s not very charitable. Life of the mother and all that.”
“Your senses are heightened just as mine are.”
“More so, I’m sure. I’m an Alpha. You’re just a little human freak.”
“I’m not like you,” he conceded, “but we both see the wider spectrum.”
“Yeah, yeah. I have the senses of a honeybee and the nose of a hunting hound. What’s your point?”
“The perfect figure eight. All Alphas have the perfect figure eight and the black wasps — ”
“And my baby’s energy is the same, but white and indigo.”
“Yes. She will be more powerful than all the Alphas.”
“More powerful than anything.” Shiva laughed gaily. “What does The Way of Things have to say about that? The new breed too scary?”
“Too powerful.”
“The only people who think anything is too powerful are the ones who have no power. You’ve got some cute magic tricks, but you’re just a messenger boy. I’m the queen. I haven’t been too happy about this parasite taking over my body, but the truth is, now I’m actually looking forward to meeting my little princess.”
Jaimie shook his head. “If you join forces with Misericordia, you and the baby will die.”
“Nonsense,” Shiva said evenly. “Nothing’s scarier than me.”
“I’m trying to save your life — ”
She turned away. “Don’t be silly. I’m not a fool you can manipulate. You’re trying to save yourself. What did you think you could offer that could possibly interest me? Are you going to show me the trick so I can dream lucidly? Small recompense considering I’ve saved the world. Only proper that I rebuild it and do it right this time.”
“Saved it? You’ve destroyed it!”
“Have you watched the sky in the real world, boy? Can’t you feel nature coming back already? The deforestation is over. When I concentrate, I can feel the hum of the Van Allen belt. Global warming will reverse. I feel new energy pulsing through the troposphere like blood. There’s a new energy, a green thrumming, I can feel through the water and the trees. Our atmosphere is only ten miles high, a thin layer of protection, but it's vivid and stronger already. Can’t you feel that?”
“No,” he admitted. “You must be tapping the child’s energy to stretch your senses that far. I can’t sense that.”
“You talk about the probabilities of the future. I know the future because I already built it. There will be sentient — very sentient — creatures on earth in a thousand years because of the sacrifices I’ve made.”
“The sacrifices you demanded of others. The human race — ”
“That race was about to turn into the wall and burn up in the crash.”
“It's genocide. ”
She shrugged. “It’s not murder if the victim is committing suicide, Jaimie. I engineered a virus and it has succeeded beyond my imagining.”
“It’s still evolving.”
“Yes. Beyond understanding.” Shiva began to pace. “Do you ever pause to wonder how that can be? I’m the opportunity Nature’s been waiting for. My daughter and me? We’re what Gaia needs.”
“What if you just kept Bermuda? Don’t go to Misericordia. Stay where you are and rule the island. Be queen of Bermuda.”
“Heh. I killed Bermuda’s last queen, so it’s already mine.”
“But — ”
“Use me and think I’ll be satisfied with an island that’s only fifty square kilometers? Really?”
“The Way of Things says — ”
“I know what It told you, Jaimie. The Way of Things came to me in a dream, too. Years ago! How do you think we figured out how to create Sutr-X? I work for The Way of Things!”
“Wh-what?”
The wind began to pick up and the air chilled. The twilight sky over the Nexus washed out, instantly replaced with a gray the color of gun metal.
“It’s not even the first time it’s happened! Francis Crick was on LSD when he came up with the key to life. That must have been The Way of Things whispering about a 3D double helix model of DNA. Crick opened the doors of perception, knocking back LSD and partying naked. He never would have guessed he was just another pawn, preparing the science so eventually I could come along and do my job.”
Jaimie fell to his knees and put his head in his hands. Storm clouds rolled in and bolt lightning flashed across the sky to constant thunder.
“Face it, boy!” Shiva screamed above the thunder’s roar. “I corrected the world with the Sutr virus thanks to The Way of
Things. It tells you I shouldn’t go to Misericordia? Ha! Classic divide and conquer. I’m not falling for it. Being Alpha queen feels too good to stop! I won’t stop! I was an instrument, just like you, messenger boy, and I’m collecting all my rewards.”
Shiva's gown had turned ebony and the rising wind pulled at its fabric, stretching long skeins of black rags out into a wild, dark halo.
“I almost feel sorry for you,” Shiva said. “You think you’re so smart. You think you’re the hero but you’re just the avatar for a limited, diseased species going extinct. Over ninety-eight percent of documented species are extinct. This isn’t new. Humans are just another log on the woodpile.”
“We aren’t only that. We can be more.”
“You call it genocide. I call it positive change. I’m the leader of that change. I’m making room for the next evolution.”
Jaimie searched Shiva’s aura for a hint of deception but he could find none. “You…really work for The Way of Things?”
She giggled. “Following Nature’s orders and this so-called genocide? This is literally nature’s order. In 540 million years, mass extinctions have happened half a dozen times over or more. Humans aren’t so special. You’re part of the eco-system. Birth, entropy, decay and dust! The world grinds brief dreams and aspirations into forgotten bones. Then you get anonymity. That’s the most reliable thing you do.”
“But…we’re people.”
She laughed again. “Oh, please. We never mourned the dinosaurs. We burned them for fuel. You want me to shed a tear and spare what’s left of your race? No one mourned the Neanderthals. You think you’re more worthy because you once, briefly, managed to fill the world with WalMarts?”
“Your baby could be the world’s new hope. Through her, a powerful race could rise. Your baby could be the ultimate force for good until the sun explodes.”
“What good does that do me unless I’m part of it? How boring.”
Jaimie raised his head. “Fine. My father says there is no use arguing with people determined to misunderstand. You’ll choose your path no matter what I say.”
“Heh. I guess I still have a little human nature left in me then, don’t I?” She gazed into the mirrors that served as the boy's eyes and preened, patting her hair and admiring herself.
“Your human nature is going to kill you,” Jaimie said.
“I’ll win. You know why? Because I am the Alpha queen and I’m carrying more power in me than you can fathom. Think about it. Ninety-eight percent of all species, extinct and you still think your species should inherit the Earth? And people thought I was a narcissist.”
Shiva threw her head back, her laughter trilling up and down scales. “You're weird, but you aren’t special, kid. You’re a dot on a dot of a forgotten planet. You don’t matter. Your life doesn’t matter. You are a blip.”
Jaimie moaned and covered his face with his fists. “No. This can’t be.”
“Nature doesn’t take sides, Jaimie. The Way of Things doesn’t really care if you lose and I win. What It wants is for us to fight. That’s where the entertainment lies.”
“I don’t — ”
“You are a witness to everything but you understand nothing. The truth is right in front of you, buried no deeper than our own design. Look at the dynamics of history. We are designed to entertain an uncaring god.”
“No. There’s still right and wrong.”
“If right is so right, how come it didn’t kick wrong’s ass a long time ago?”
Shiva paced, her black dress tearing and stretched out by the howling wind into long, ragged banners.
“Think about what you see for a change. See it as an impartial observer, as The Way of Things sees the world. Consider: survival of the fittest, too much testosterone and smart versus dumb. Look at religious denominations and governments and self-interest and the food chain. Look at an economy of greed that acted like people could eat constant criticism. Consider Real Housewives of Constant Self-righteous Indignation! It was all like that for one reason. We’re designed this way. We’re all still gladiators and we’re all here to fight. It’s all about the show. The Way of Things wants us to fight.”
She smiled. “Let’s do.”
He sends innocents running.
Behind Shiva, the birch trees burst into flame. The forest began to scream. Shiva mocked the trees, screaming back and laughing.
“Stop!” Jaimie yelled. He rose in the air, ready to strike at her, but the gown of frayed ebony banners transformed into long, black reaching pythons. Their bodies were as thick as large men’s thighs. Their enormous heads split into wide mouths lined with long, white serrated knives for fangs. Their snake eyes were as white as Shiva’s and all their eyes were on Jaimie.
The boy gritted his teeth. “I’ll let The Way of Things use me. It’s not slavery if I choose it. I’ll be a gladiator.”
The heads of a dozen snakes turned left and right as Shiva turned her head. “Can you feel that thrumming energy? Whether we fight here or in the waking world, we aren’t just fighting in your nightmares. All my life, jealous people called me a bitch.” She laughed. “You’re my bitch, Jaimie Spencer.”
The snakes came at him, launching through the air, closing the distance faster than a quick gulp of air. The pythons wrapped around his legs, his torso, his arms and his neck.
He began to choke and, even though he was in the Nexus, he knew his body in the real world had stopped breathing, too. His eyes rolled up.
I’ve lost? Already?Even as they burned, Jaimie heard the familiar voice of the birch forest. It was screaming for him to wake up. “Wake up! Wake up now! Escape her while you still can! You’re not breathing! You’re dying! Jaimie! Wake up!”
Shiva closed her fist just as she had crushed the butterfly. The snake around Jaimie's neck closed even tighter. Jaimie could feel the python’s fast breath on his face, putrid and hot. The living noose closed his throat. All he could hear was Shiva’s harsh, victorious cackle, the anguish of the screaming trees and his pulse (fast, but slowing and whittled down to a thread.)
“She’s killing you! Wake up before it’s too late!” The trees shrieked louder and longer, “Wake up!”
The trees went quiet — and even Shiva’s laughter was cut short — as the boy’s reply came, not from his throat, but in deafening thunder that shook the Nexus and cracked the earth at his feet.“NO!”
Jaimie summoned the lightning. Bolts of electricity, five times hotter than the sun, passed over Jaimie leaving him untouched. They shot through the snakes and into Shiva. The pythons erupted into flames and disappeared into the air like magician’s flash paper.
The thick white bolts seared Shiva as her muscles contracted all at once, freezing her in a full body spasm. Electricity wrapped and closed around her, a bright, crackling cage of pain. Shiva would have screamed in agony if her mind and body allowed it. The torture went on and on as the storm reached its climax and more lightning reached down from the sky to kill the woman who had killed so many.
“I’m not just a pawn, Shiva! I’m not merely an instrument for The Way of Things to play!”
Finally, Jaimie released her.
Shiva collapsed naked to the floor of the burning forest. Amid flame and smoke, all went preternaturally quiet, as if the Nexus Itself was a living witness, holding its breath in anticipation of the battle’s outcome.
Her heart had stopped. Jaimie killed Shiva. She had stopped breathing in the Nexus and her body was dead on a beach in Bermuda.
Jaimie took a deep breath, let it hiss out slowly through his teeth, and sank to his knees. “I-I’m sorry.”
It was the child who saved her mother. White energy reached up from Shiva’s womb to encase her heart. Another moment passed before the beat of life thrummed through her body again.
Shiva opened her bright, white eyes and smiled. “See? My little princess is a force for good. Go ahead. Kill me again. She won’t let me die.”
Before Shiva disappeared to awake in pink sand, she watched the boy rise in the air. No, not a boy. His face was different now. His angel’s wings of fire spread wide, burning bright and hot behind him. He had a dignity and resolve about him she had not detected before.
She heard his thoughts: Liminality. The stage of a rite where you let go of what you were in order to become what you will be.
Shiva was about to speak, to taunt him. He cut her off. “Thank you, Shiva. You are my chrysalis. I am not just a messenger for The Way of Things. I’m not just a collection of dictionary entries and Latin phrases. I am not your bitch. I am not a powerless freak. I am not merely an instrument. I am not a tool. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.” I am human, therefore nothing human is strange to me.
Shiva's smile died.
He stopped himself from crying until Shiva awoke, leaving him surrounded by walls of orange and blue flame. As Jaimie’s tears fell, so came the rain, extinguishing the forest fire.
His flaming wings gone, Jaimie floated down to the wet moss, which hissed as it cooled.
A moment later, the butterfly came to him and alit on his palm. Each wing’s white eyes blinked at him slowly as the creature watched the boy weep. As Jaimie cried harder, the rain turned torrential.
“I couldn’t make her understand. I matter. Shiva’s wrong. She has to be wrong. I do matter. I must matter. I…mean something. I am loved.”
The butterfly closed all its eyes and sifted away, dust carried on dying wind. The creature’s body melted in the rain. A pool of spent indigo slipped through Jaimie’s fingers, lost to the forest floor.
“I am a weapon,” Jaimie said.
The burnt trees moaned.
Season 3, Episode 2
We all long for The Last Cafe. We hope it’s true, even though all the evidence says the party will not continue and at midnight we’ll turn into rotting pumpkins.
*
We are most like Gods when we create and destroy. Raindrops fall from storm clouds and plants grow. A little more and flash floods kill. Chaos is so creative.
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 65