by Ethan Cooper
BLINK
…this is what happens when you follow all of somebody else’s rules, but break your own.
47/Hour’s End
Unknown/Unknown
“Who is he?” I ask, feeling lightheaded. The memories—if that’s what they were—swirl around like leaves caught in whirlwind. The feelings those memories brought are stronger. Excitement and fear. Lust and loss. An ache in my chest that wasn’t there before.
“Who is who?” Calamity Carl asks.
He’s a good actor. I almost believe he doesn’t know.
“You know who. The person you made me remember. Tell me who he is. I need to know.”
“You convinced me that you’re able to continue carrying out Devligod’s plan, but it wouldn’t be any fun for me if I gave you all the answers. Remember, Blue, it’s about the journey, not the destination!”
“For me, it can’t be about anything else; I don’t know where I’m going.”
(stop talking to him don’t you remember what he)
(did to you)
He tilts his head back to look at the sky. I follow his gaze. Something streaks through the clouds up above, a blurry orange line scrawled on a canvas of gray.
We follow that orange line until it descends below the clouds. It burns bright, but isn’t consumed. No way to tell how big it us, but it disappears beyond the skyline. I’m not sure whether it fell into the city or the ocean beyond.
“You didn’t heed me when I warned you,” Calamity Carl says, “now this island will bleed. Everybody here will bleed.”
“I already listened to this lecture once,” I say, sitting down, because the mere act of standing has me breathing deep and hard. The presence of the pulse dagger in the backpack is something my mind keeps returning to. Not much comfort, but I’ve proven I can hurt him with it. He’s not going to leave me alone; best to bide my time and exact vengeance when my odds of victory are greater.
“Devilgod has a plan for your life, but he is not alone. There are others. They’ll make their presence known soon.”
A sudden throbbing in my head joins the pounding of my heart. My chest rises and falls with each labored breath. “There are others…”
“Get off this island. Go to the mainland. Find Athara, Syl.”
(he only calls you that when…)
“Athara? What are you talking about? Who is that? If you want me off the island, why don’t you just teleport me off? Why don’t you help me? Do you have a boat I can use?”
(stop it just stop this)
(why are you still)
(talking to him?)
“I’ve given you everything you need to survive. I deliver messages. You have to do the rest without me. I can’t survive for you. Goodbye.”
He’s on the move, passing me where I sit, heading toward the ocean behind me.
“What day is it?” I call back over my shoulder, unable to summon the strength to readjust my position.
“It’s the twenty-seventh of December.”
Twelve days. I was his prisoner for twelve days. I haven’t eaten for twelve days.
I try to swallow, but it catches in my throat, causing me to cough uncontrollably. There’s bile in my mouth and that tingly feeling around my jaw that means I just might vomit. Not that I have anything in my stomach.
Calamity Carl is gone. I can hear the crash of waves against the shore in the distance, so the ocean can’t be all that far away. Less than a kilometer. Part of me tries to think about where exactly he’s walking to, but now that I’m out here, by myself, without a captor to concern myself with, my eyes are fighting to close.
It’s dark, but the moon is up there somewhere, providing a pale haze that allows me to see well enough to open my backpack. I feel around inside for one of the food packets—at least that’s what I believe they are. Saliva fills my mouth—an unpleasant stinging sensation—as I extract one of the packets. Tearing it open, I’m squeezing the contents into my mouth. It’s potent stuff, some sort of fruit flavoring infused in a glucose gel. This is the stuff you feed younglings when they won’t eat anything they’re supposed to eat. It slides down easily enough. Gripping the food packet, squeezing as much of it out as I can has my forearm muscles aching, so I grab it with both hands, sucking at the opening like I don’t have backpack full of them.
My whole body is quivering when I’m done. The urge to grab another packet is strong, but an unease in my belly stops me.
(how sure are you that he didn’t just)
(poison you again?)
I grab the bottle of SuperWater, and I do manage to get a mouthful of the sweet concoction within before I realize that I’m fading fast. I put my backpack behind my head as I recline. The ground isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. There’s a pleasant buzz in my body. Not sure if that’s from the food, the water, or if I’m finally allowing my body to go into shock. Whichever it is, I’m not going to resist.
(get off this island…)
I take the sound of collapsing waves on sand and the sight of the city’s skyline brushed with fire and smoke with me as I drift toward sleep.
(find Athara…)
DRIFTING WITH THE BLEED
48/Descent
2195.12.28/Morning
If I dream, I don’t remember it. I wake in the same position I passed out in—flat on my back, hands on my stomach, head resting against my backpack. There are gaps in the cloud cover, through which I can see the night sky beginning to give way to the approaching day.
Oh, there’s a tarokk gnawing on the tip of my boot. It’s got its claws dug into the outer surface of my boot, but its mouth is too small to get much more than the edge of the sole inside. The little scavenger isn’t pretty—in the gray light of the impending dawn, its skin is a mottled, sickly green. Its squished nose makes it look like it went face first into a large rock at some point in its life. I watch as it digs at the dirt with the talons on its hind legs, trying to find purchase as the ground crumbles underneath its feet. Tarokks aren’t big enough to be a threat, and I’m still not quite awake, so I make no moves to scare it away. Must be a burrow nearby. And a twin. Tarokks are always born in pairs, and they never travel apart.
Up there, piercing through clouds, an object, glowing orange, descends to the earth. I watch it fall into the city.
(you know angel)
(to leave the island you)
(have to go back there)
Looking down my body, watching the tarokk through half-closed eyes, my hands rest on my belly. Right there. Right where my child is growing.
Can’t find it within myself to disbelieve Calamity Carl or 2-85.
(or 3-43)
There’s a child inside me. Fingers caressing the material there, but there’s nothing to feel yet. The life within is too small. Can’t sense anything. I don’t feel different. I don’t feel pregnant. And I should feel something. Shouldn’t I?
Calamity Carl hurt my baby when he shocked me.
(NO)
(you hurt your baby)
It might be dead. He might have killed it.
(NO)
(you killed it)
Why should I feel guilty? I don’t feel pregnant.
The tarokk’s twin appears. I push up on my elbows, startling the first tarokk. Its arms curve over its head, the lone talon on each limb brandished toward me as it takes several steps backward.
I stand up, muscles complaining all the way. The tarokks skitter to what they must consider a safe distance before turning back to face me. Their language to each other is a low-frequency chittering, and they engage in it for several seconds before running off side by side.
This wasted land stretches before me. Barren and desolate, kilometers of lifeless dirt. I suppose that some sorts of mutant plants live out here, sucking moisture from whatever’s in the air, feeding off small animals or something. So many unexplained and undocumented lifeforms in this desert. Nobody comes out here and studies. Shadowy hulks in the distance are the ruins of ancient machi
nes, or the discarded husks of imploded structures. Layers of smoke seep from the city and hang over the land in a tattered, drooping veil. I can smell the city burning. Can smell it dying. The citizens are tearing the city apart—a slow, laborious suicide. Some part of me should probably ask why? But if there’s nobody around to provide answers, there’s no reason to ask. Anyway, who can stop such a thing? It’s all going to end. Calamity Carl told me so, and now I can see it unfolding with my own eyes.
Get off this island, Syl.
I estimate that the outskirts of the city are only a few kilometers away.
Should get moving. Regardless of whether Calamity Carl is right, I need to figure out a way off this island. There’s nothing in this place for me.
(liar)
Sitting down next to my backpack, I’m amazed at how good I feel—much better than I should considering what I just went through. I quiet the rumbling of my stomach by swallowing the contents of one my food packets, following it with a mouthful of SuperWater. Maybe it’s the food. Maybe it’s the SuperWater. Maybe Calamity Carl—
I pick a foot, unbuckle my boot, and slide it off, peeling my sock away as well. Fingers grab for my pinky toe, which is as pure and undefiled as it’s ever been. There’s no pain when I wiggle it. I explore it with my fingers, feeling for anything out of place. I move it all around, but there’s nothing. It’s healed. Better than that though; it’s as if it had never been broken. The other foot is the same—even if it still wrapped in a bandage, the little toe is perfect.
I’m pulling my boot back on when I see another piece of the sky falling. It’s a dark streak, haloed by a thin red glow, moving against the still reddish gray sky. It’s a meteor of some sort, on a collision course with the earth. It’s above the smoke layer at first, but then it is engulfed, only for a second, emerging, hurtling toward the ground. It’s a beautiful thing to watch, a spherical blob, charring at the edges, trailing smoke and flickers of fire.
Too late, I realize that it’s going to impact nearby. Just before it hits, I can see that the object’s rate of descent slows. It burns a path of fire through the air as it passes over me and down behind a rise in the ground. There’s a small explosion as it crashes into the ground. The ground beneath my feet shifts, followed by a second, larger explosion—sounds different, muffled and precise—and I don’t know how my eyes are picking this up, but I can actually see a shockwave coming toward me. It tears at the earth, churning dirt and rocks. I drop to the ground, holding my breath and closing my eyes, but I don’t quite make it all the way down in ti—
49/Detonation
2195.12.28/Morning
Despite my efforts to close my mouth through it all, there’s stale dirt grinding against my tongue and wedged between my teeth, gritty and pasty on my gums. I keep myself from swallowing somehow, spitting as much as I can out onto the ground. Propping myself up on a skinned elbow, I reach for my backpack, which looks undamaged, and stayed with me somehow. It takes a couple swigs of SuperWater and several minutes to clear my mouth.
Ouch.
I’m not in the same place I was. The shockwave moved me, sent me floating—flying—soaring—sailing—rolling. Whatever. It wasn’t a gentle push, though nothing feels broken. I have no clue how that’s possible. Didn’t hit any big rocks on my way down, sharp or otherwise, so there’s that to be thankful for. Skinsuit is covered in filth.
I stand up. When I run fingers through my hair, it looks like it’s raining dirt. Feel so unclean, I find that my fingers are playing with the ziptabs on my skinsuit, as if removing it right now would be a good idea. Dirt in my ear. Dust against my neck, doing its best to roll down under my skinsuit. Shake and brush as best I can, but the feeling that I’ve been permanently contaminated persists.
Tossing the backpack over one shoulder, I have to walk over a small rise in the ground to find the impact point. The landscape has a wound about a meter deep and ten meters long—a misshapen oval due to the angle of impact.
And there, at the deepest part of the crater, is the object. Can’t make out any details because of the thick, gray plumes of smoke that envelop its form, extending like a mass of writhing tentacles. Not all of it’s smoke though; something in there is venting steam. It’s smaller than I expected—only about half a meter in diameter. I move closer, stepping into the crater, but have to back off because of the intense heat radiating off the thing.
As the smoke begins to clear and the heat begins to fade, I can see the object is a black sphere, its surface littered with countless pores venting puffs of steam. Can’t get close enough to touch it yet, but I know I’m going to the second I can. I want to feel the surface of it, the strange, uneven texture—shallow indentations and tiny, concave craters of various shapes and sizes.
Okay, where did this thing come from? From—
(not from space if that’s what you were)
(thinking don’t you remember)
(this isn’t the first that’s fallen maybe you)
(should leave)
But I don’t leave. The object is cooling down fast. Already the heat from it has lessened enough so that I can come within a meter of it, almost close enough to reach out and touch. As I’m about to drop to my knees, I catch a sliver of movement in my peripheral vision. It’s one of the tarokks peeking over the edge of the crater. Its talons are drooping, planted in the dirt as if it needs them to stay upright. It’s making a low, warbling sound that drops in frequency. Never heard a sound like that, as if it’s—
(you missed something)
(look around)
I do, seeing what I missed. The other tarokk is a bloody, charred husk just behind me. I had to have stepped over its corpse a second ago. Not sure how I didn’t step on it. Oh wait, I did. There on the side of my boot, a smudge of red that streaks along the sole, as if I’d intentionally stepped on the tarokk’s corpse then dragged my foot through it.
Suppose I should feel some sorrow for the tarokk’s untimely demise, but all I can think about is that the most comfortable skinsuit I’ve ever worn is now covered in dirt, and the best boots I’ve ever had are soiled with tarokk blood.
Everything’s fucking ruined and dammit now I’m crying.
On my hands and knees, I shuffle toward the object, the tarokk’s wail an incessant reminder in my ears.
Have I felt this level of curiosity for an unknown, possibly dangerous thing before? The urge to know more about it drives me, pushes me forward. There’s no need to overanalyze or explain this. Just do it.
The smoke has cleared, and the object has cooled enough that I’m going to touch it now. I wipe my hand on my thigh and reach out. Fingers poking through gentle clouds of steam.
The surface is warm. It feels like a wirewitch’s metaskin, with small ridges, though it doesn’t give at all with pressure. I run my fingertips into the indentations on its surface as if they were arranged in interpretable patterns—an inscribed language I could read by touch.
The object isn’t natural. Meaning somebody made it.
It’s possible that thought alone should have me scrambling backward, climbing out of the crater, and running away, but instead I lean closer, turning my ear toward the object to. When I don’t hear anything other than the occasional puff of steam, I push off but leave my hands still resting on its surface.
What are you?
In answer, the object shudders, as if something inside it started vibrating, then stopped. I pull my hands away and try to jump back, but there’s a loud WHUMP as the object explodes.
This time right in my face.
50/Discovery
2195.12.28/Morning
WHOOSH! and WIND!
Reflexes get my eyes and mouth closed. The explosion blows my hair back, though it’s not really an explosion—at least not in the fire and heat sense—but a thin outward wave of force. Anywhere my skin is exposed gets blasted with fine grains of debris. Hundreds of thousands of pinpricks against the flesh of my cheeks, my eyelids, my hands. It passes in an in
stant, but I hold my breath and wait for the sensation of tiny particles hitting my face to stop.
Peeking through one eye. I can confirm what my body is already telling me—that I’m covered in tiny black dust. My skinsuit has taken on a darker hue, and my actual skin isn’t any different. I look like I’m infected with some ancient plague. There are larger, gritty grains of whatever this stuff is mixed in with the fine dust. I wipe my hands together, relieved that the stuff is dry and falls away from my skin easily enough. I hold my breath and try to keep the substance out of my mouth. Not a good idea to be inhaling it. I rub my face, neck, and hair down until I’ve removed as much of it as I can. After that, I set to work on my skinsuit. What a mess. After a few minutes, I’ve removed enough to be satisfied that I’m not going to be casually sucking it down into my lungs.
The object is smaller, which means the black dust is the remains of its outer surface. No longer marred with imperfections and dents, the object is now a perfect sphere.
I want to touch it again.
Then my fingertips are against its surface. Oh, so smooth and so, so black. It feels hard and soft at the same time, as if it were made of a liquid that was trying its best to be solid. I let my other hand confirm the diagnosis of my first—it’s solid and real, but unlike anything I’ve ever touched.
I deny my hands their desire to remain in contact with the alien surface, pulling them back so I can think for a second.
(not from space)
But where it came from isn’t as interesting a question as who sent it. This thing is dipped in the stink of humanity. This object was made and directed by humans, and that means there’s a reason why it’s here.
(just a satellite fallen)
(from its orbit)
As it rests there, it begins to hum.