Fuck you, braincube.
“It shambles ever closer, so close now that Aria’s nostrils burn with the stink of sparked neurons and putrid glial residues. Aria tries to once again distinguish between saying things and doing things, but it is difficult. She thinks this might be interesting from a philosophical perspective, but she is probably going to die too quickly to really get into it.”
The braincube is the worst of all possible cubes.
“Drops of fear-sweat collect on her forehead and glisten in the starlight. She struggles to move her feet. They do not move. She is desperate. She has to do something if she is not to be braincubed. She tries to think with the part of her brain that is not a brain but is actually a robot. She thinks she might—”
—be getting the hang of it again but she is—
“—not sure if she has it yet. Or if she ever had it at all.”
The anomie is not helping.
“Then, at the last possible moment—”
Aria leaps back. The braincube is still up in her business, but there is room now for reprisal. She crouches and points the Sister Ray. She goes down, down-right, right, punch. This would cause her to shoot her raygun if this were a video game, but this is not a video game. It is real life. Again, toxic psychoradiation is some bullshit.
“Goddamn it,” she says, before adding, “There is no God. We are all nothing in a sea of nothing.”
The emotional pain is unbearable. Aria can barely remain conscious. Baring its teeth, the bearcube rotates such that its mighty clawed corner comes down on Aria’s face, adding physical pain to the mix. Blood pours from the wound, spraying Aria’s shirt and the nearest side of the bearcube. The bearcube does not stop. It is relentless and without mercy. It spins around and around, murderously, and when it has cut her enough it rolls itself on top of her body. She reaches out with her left hand to push it away, and the pain she experiences is as if she has plunged her hand directly into a star. Teeth tear and shred and gnash at her fingers. She tries to pull her hand away, but she is weak from pain and blood loss and also the bearcube is a real motherfucker. She cannot escape. She cannot breathe. This is it. This is the end. She can only look into the wall of fur and listen to the crackle of bones and—
Wait.
There is not supposed to be blood inside of her. The fluids inside her are purple and viscous and cold. Nor does she need to breathe. Like, it’s a cool thing to do when you want to smell stuff, but it’s not necessary for her survival. Plus, wasn’t it a brain or something a minute ago? Nothing about this is adding up.
Wait.
Her fingers struggle to find the walkman at her waist. They will not remain steady. They tremble like she is telling a scary story or doing a magic trick. But they soon find their quarry. She presses play.
Almost. The bearcube shifts just as her index finger is on the button, pinning her hand down under its weight. The bearcube is everywhere and everything, and the world is going dark. She thinks she may be slipping in and out of consciousness, but it is difficult to tell. Was she unconscious just now? Or did she just blink? Does it matter? She cannot see anything anymore. It is not darkness. Darkness is a thing. She sees nothing. The void. The end.
“Fuck everything,” she whispers.
She can’t die here. She summons all her remaining Arianess and tries to pull her hand from under the bearcube. It does not move. Too much weight on it. Then, redoubling her Arianess, and trying her very best not to scream, she tries to wrench her other hand free of the bearcube’s clutches. The intact pieces of meat and bone are stuck in the bearcube’s teeth, and it does not want to let go. It bites down harder. Aria pulls. This is not a pleasant experience.
When she is finished, she reaches over with the stump and slams it against the buttons on the walkman. Again and again. And then there is music. An Earth song. Disco. A girl singing a song about lust over trippy synthesizers and trembling static.
The braincube is across the way, and Aria is not dying or dead. Awesome. The Sister Ray is still pointed at it. The music blasts in her ears, and she can no longer feel the braincube in her mind. She is about to pull the trigger, but she sees that the braincube is shaking slightly. She does not know if this is a natural part of the braincube’s biology, or if the braincube is experiencing fear. She lowers her raygun slightly.
“What’s your deal?” she asks.
There is a long wait, and then Aria imagines Zarzak and the braincube dancing together. The thought is gentle, fleeting, and at first she thinks it is just a stray imagining. But then, there is another image of Zarzak and the brain together, and then another. And Aria sees the braincube in her mind’s eye, smaller now, alone amongst an array of bizarre xenostructures—a park maybe, a playground? And Aria sees the braincube alone, covered in a purple slime, surrounded by other braincubes in groups of three to five, also covered in slime. She sees a ship, hears an explosion, feels the sickly squeeze of hyperspace in her gut, all punctuated by images of Zarzak. But then disaster. The ship crashes, and the braincube is alone again, its brainbody bloodied, its transport reduced to rubble. In the end, the image of Zarzak is flashed over and over again. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak.
“Okay. I get it.”
The image fades.
Aria stomps her cigarette out and gets on her jetbike.
“Later,” she says.
Before she can go, she is bombarded by images of the braincube dying, starving, murdered, dead. A stack of braincubes teetering mournfully on braincube planet. The sound of silence.
Aria looks back at the trembling cube. “What do you want?”
Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak.
“Stop doing that.”
A small, simple ship flying up and away from the Drowning King, escaping homeward.
Aria sighs.
“Fuck you,” she says, but she straps the braincube to the back of the jetbike. It is very awkward. She does not like the squishy feeling of the braincube pushing on her back, and its size and shape completely mess up her aerodynamics and balance.
“We’re not friends,” she says, as they begin the journey across the eye.
* * * *
Aria starts noticing them just after passing from sclera to iris. First, a single Driffle lying on the surface of the eye, bleeding cloudstuff from a wound at its side. Unable to speak its language, she seals its wound with the Sister Ray and goes about her business. Then there is a bruised Ceterian limping toward the pupil. Aria approaches to offer aid, but the Ceterian yells at her with all its mouths and is way uncool, so she bounces. She sees more and more lifeforms as she travels, some of familiar species, some entirely new to her, each one traveling alone. Many are injured, but all those that are conscious persevere.
This is unexpected. To the extent that there exists mutually understood, enforceable law across galaxies, visiting the Drowning King is a super-serious offense, as it is generally agreed across culture and species that fucking around with ancient space gods is not a good idea. Nobody wants to awaken anything that’s gonna take over/destroy everything. Better to just leave shit alone. Aria had expected to see a few desperate types hanging out, possibly sent by their own planets to deal with this shit, but she had not anticipated seeing this surfeit of weirdoes.
The brawl starts around the pupil, just as the Spire of Zarzak comes into view.
“Holy fuck,” Aria says.
It extends for miles, and there are far too many participants to count. Millions at least. Aliens of all kinds, wondrous creatures with strange physiology and technology unknown on Aria’s side of the universe, and all of them are going fucking ham. They punch each other with fists as large as boulders, choke each other with dripping tentacles, fly into the air and fire mind lasers, pilot shiny death robots and mechanized animal hybrids, sing songs that melt bones, etc. The fighting appears indiscriminate. There are no sides, no rules: just violence. There are screams of all sorts: pain, anger, fear—but Ari
a is capable of making out only one word:
“Zarzak.”
These are the Fuckboys of Zarzak, the obsessives, the stalkers, the jealous assholes. Most lifeforms are content to keep Zarzak in their heart, quietly nursing a sweet, peaceful love that is jealous and kind and crosses time and space without envy or anger. But these motherfuckers are clearly not keeping it together, and Aria is unsure how to proceed. She sees herself blasting the shit out of all of them with the Sister Ray, and for a moment, she is unsure if it is her own thought or the braincube’s.
“I told you to stop doing that. It’s not cool. Anyway, we need the power of chill vibes not aggro shit,” says Aria. But she allows herself to imagine blasting the shit out of all of them with the Sister Ray. It is a pleasant thought, especially with the knowledge that these people are all jerks perverting all that is beautiful and awesome about Zarzak, and she hopes that the braincube did not hear her think that. She puts Beeblax’s mixtape on again, hoping there might be a song with the power of chill vibes on it. But no. Just more alien noise.
“I guess we do this the hard way.”
Aria revs the jetbike and drives straight into the crowd, weaving through the combatants, dodging their attempts on her and each other. The ungainliness of the braincube is initially a hindrance, bringing her within a hair’s breadth of getting decapitated by a giant psycho mantis and then burned by a living explosion and then brought asymptotically close to absolute zero by a slug guy. But soon enough she settles into a rhythm, and she realizes that the fighting is not quite as indiscriminate as she first thought. There are some conventions, some strategy. The Fuckboys are trying to approach the Spire while also trying to keep all other Fuckboys away from the Spire. Given the choice, most will focus their efforts more on preventing those behind them from progressing than impeding those already ahead of them. They all seem very angry that Aria is effectively cutting the line, but none of them does anything to stop her once she has passed.
It takes about a day to get through it all.
* * * *
The base of the spire is a great machine drilling into the eye of the Drowning King. There are many Fuckboys here, and these ones seem extra rowdy, but there is also a golden robot calmly sitting on a long series of steps leading to the entrance, not fighting anyone. This is a surprise to Aria, as she had begun to forget that it was even possible to not be engaged in 24/7 fisticuffs. The Fuckboys mostly ignore the robot and the area immediately surrounding it. None follows Aria when she approaches it.
“Madness,” says the robot when it sees her. “They have forgotten why they even started this journey in the first place.”
“You speak English,” says Aria.
“I am familiar with all the languages of this arm of the universe, and my subroutines generate probable languages at a rate of one million per cycle. You are a human of Earth, yes?”
“Basically. I’m from there, anyway.”
“Yes. This truly is madness. All wish to enter this spire, yet none will deign to allow another entry. Their minds are clouded with a foolish passion.”
“Yeah. That’s kind of why I’m here.”
The robot stands. “I am T.A.R.C.T.I.L., the Tactical Assault Robot Created to Increase Love. I was designed to ensure the continued existence of love in this universe, yet I will never love or be loved myself.”
“Oh. Cool. My name is Aria. That’s not my real name, but I just sort of go by that now.”
“Acceptable.”
“So, uh, are you with Zarzak, or are you just chilling or what?”
“I have no formal affiliation with the being known as Zarzak, and I lack the capacity to experience the love of Zarzak as other sentients do. I am here of my own accord, to guard the gates of this spire and stop those who might interfere with Zarzak.”
“And why is that?”
“I exist only for the propagation of love, and Zarzak is the fulfillment of love.”
“What? No. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s dumb.”
“All the universe now knows love. This is the fulfillment of love, the ultimate form of love, a love that enmeshes all.”
“I mean, Zarzak’s cool and all, but that’s not what love is. Being forced to love a weird space monster is not love.”
“Zarzak forces nothing. Zarzak asks nothing of those who love it. Zarzak plants the seed and allows it to flower. Does one ever choose to love? Love is always an imposition by fate and biology.”
“It’s still not real.”
“What makes love real? If there is no difference between the thing and its simulacrum, then both are as real as the other.”
“It’s creepy and wrong. It’s in my head, in everybody’s head.”
“Zarzak provides only warm feelings toward an abstraction. All may exist as they are, only with love in their hearts.”
Uninterested in pursuing this line of inquiry further, Aria sighs and reaches for the Sister Ray. Before she can even touch it, T.A.R.C.T.I.L. grasps her wrist. Its grip is painful and unyielding. With its other hand, it holds a glowing laser pistol to her head.
“I do not wish to harm you, Aria, but I will do what I must. I am armed with the most advanced weaponry in the universe. I am trained in every martial practice. None can stand against T.A.R.C.T.I.L. when love is on the line.”
Aria slowly raises her arms. “It’s cool. I’m chill. I get it.”
T.A.R.C.T.I.L. lets her go but keeps its weapon trained on her.
“If you wish to continue our discourse, I would allow it. If not, I will ask you to leave this place.”
Aria nods, sits down, and begins talking. She tries to convince T.A.R.C.T.I.L. that it is wrong. The task is next to impossible. Aria martials every ounce of rhetorical ability within her, but is essentially only able to restate her core premises, i.e., that love of Zarzak is a violation of consent and that love created through artifice is both qualitatively distinct from and materially inferior to that love which might be called natural. Each of her arguments is met with a dozen counterarguments, every premise is found contradictory, every conclusion is found wanting. T.A.R.C.T.I.L. weaves a web of rhetorical bullshit the likes of which Aria has never witnessed before. All the classical methods fail: Socratic, Hegelian, getting angry and saying a bunch of swears. There is no dialectic, no synthesis.
We are at Sophistry Level Infinity.
The braincube manages to tumble off the jetbike and squish over. Its awkward interjections of imagery and thought do little to progress the discourse, but Aria is able to find some comfort leaning against it as the hours and then days go by. Three whole days, at first filled with conversation, then mostly silent, as Aria can only occasionally summon a useful thought or concept. She goes so far as to engage T.A.R.C.T.I.L. on the nature of robotic epistemology and cyber-existentialism, attempting to leverage her own status as a cyborg to get into the nature of free will and emotion and materialism. She even throws in a few logical paradoxes.
No dice. T.A.R.C.T.I.L. is unmoved.
Aria and the braincube start playing a mental game on the second day, something from the cube’s home planet. It is kind of like backgammon, but obscenely complex, and part of the game is thinking about the move you are going to make, which is different than thinking to make the move. After a full day of getting trounced, she feels that she is very close to winning, which doesn’t matter because this game is dumb, but then she loses again, and she imagines herself flipping over the board in anger. And she realizes she is now truly into this game for real, as the pleasure of winning is dwarfed by the pain of defeat, and this sparks an epiphany.
“Hey, robot.”
“I am T.A.R.C.T.I.L.”
“Yeah. I know. I was just thinking, isn’t the very fact that I don’t believe this love is real a sign that this love is unfulfilled and imperfect?”
“It is common for sentients to not understand that the emotions they experience are love.”
“Yeah. Super common. Still imperfect. If your go
al is the fulfillment of love, then shouldn’t the universal knowledge of it be its ultimate form?”
“Perhaps.”
“And you know, I think there’s only one way peeps know for sure that the love they had was definitely, definitely real.”
“And that is?”
“Take it away. Maybe you’re in love, maybe you’re not. It’s hard to say in the moment. But then when it’s gone, you can really feel it. Like somebody cut off an arm. Like somebody cut out your soul. Like somebody cut out your brain and put it in a space robot body. If you’re right and the love is real, if I go in there and stop it, everyone will know what’s up, that they experienced the truest, realest love possible. How is that not perfect?”
“Calculating. Please stand by.”
T.A.R.C.T.I.L. just stands there for a while, frozen, and Aria is just like, whatever. She thought it was kind of a dumb argument, but it’s cool that it worked. She tells the braincube to wait here. She gets the Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak. Zarzak from it again, but she is firm. She tells the braincube to stay safe and make good decisions, and she gives it a little hug despite herself. She waves her hand in front of T.A.R.C.T.I.L.’s eyes a few times to be sure, and then she enters the Spire.
* * * *
Zarzak is on a rotating pillar in the center of a small, red room at the top of the tower. The pillar throbs with strange, humming energy, presumably plumbed from within the Drowning King. Zarzak dances, fluid and shapeless, smoothly mimicking shapes as it flows across the pillar.
Aria has the Sister Ray pointed at Zarzak, but she cannot pull the trigger. Not because she loves Zarzak—no, definitely not that—but because she feels there should be more to it than this, more than just another moment. She has been dicking around on this mission for like two weeks, and she deserves a little drama, a little acknowledgment. She wants to be witnessed. She fires a warning shot and waves.
“Hey! Hello. Over here! I am Aria! I am from a planet called Earth. We have lots of cool things there. Like, uh, cats. And phones that have games on them. Chess. Democracy. Samosas. The French New Wave. Pirates. TV on the Radio. And TVs and radios. I mean, I haven’t been back in a while. It’s complicated. I’m not really ‘human’ or whatever anymore. I’m still trying to work out a good portmanteau. Starborg? Robogal? Something like that, but not dumb. Anyway, I am here on behalf of the Star Syndicate to fuck you up.”
Cosmic Powers Page 10