Liora
As soon as I start waving that big metal arm, the slow sword, I feel ridiculous. Keeping my mad sisters at bay with a clunky demolition spike. The hydraulics shish and foosh and shupp at the flick of my wrists. I don’t even think. Not with my head. I am just wiping. Ramming the pin down from a dizzying height at full speed. I could crack the earth. Kill a mountain with my thrusts. But I am just a dog barking. When I am left, I cannot be on my right. And the black-eyed sisters just tease me until my mouth foams, until my lead strangles me.
They’re not here to attack. Cap and I misjudged. Our little stage play has become volatile and could turn on us in a second. I am worried about pulling the wool over Auryn’s eyes. Spooking her with us being spooked by those walking mittens. Imagine the cat stroking you. With a hundred paws. Rubbing their furry behinds against all your parts. And multiply that. That’s how they feel. They are cute and funny and holy as shit. Little happy monks orgying all day. Their monastery a borough the size of a mountain and the most beautiful thing on earth that is no longer a thing. It never was. They allowed Her to wake up in this body. In this first iteration now going live.
And I tried to keep everyone out. I am still desperately trying to keep control. To make sure it all goes to plan.
It doesn’t. It won’t. It never will. And She always comes through. She is the channeler. Not me. Not them. Not anyone on their own. No one unconnected can come in.
Half of the women have gotten past me and just pour in. Rush to the entrance. Auryn is trampled underfoot and ignored. Cap is overwhelmed. I can’t wield and look at the same time. I charge and swoop wide to drive the remaining dance squad further out.
The next second I look, I see Mum has picked up the trigger to carry it like a spoiled dish out into the desert, which is the one thing she shouldn’t do. Leave that thing. It’s old, shitty electronics. My eyes seek out the suitcase. She can’t walk far enough and be out of range in the open.
My distraction has opened the floodgates. The battalion splits in two. Half of them go after Mum. The others will soon try to break what shouldn’t be broken. They have forsaken me and my steel distractor. Abandoned me. Made my war elephant obsolete.
I can’t help Auryn. I have a different task.
I leave the cabin. Get slammed by the outside heat. And immediately attacked by the Pyrrh. The thing is possessed. Does a butt-slide, showering me in grit. Sandblasting my exposed bits. I am not sure what to do yet. Then I see the container door is open.
I think I instantly get it as soon as I hear Aphram’s voice.
“Lioorrrrr, lllet mmme help-p-p.”
He stutters. Not the time to try to be funny, says one part of my brain. But my gut responds differently. He’s trying to help. And he’s not well at all.
“I’m rrunning out of time…”
He doesn’t have to say what he has in mind.
The case with all the explosives — yes, all of them, we would never install any bomb in the womb — the suitcase easily triggered by a little ignored device lying in the sand next to the pile of blind freaks that has caught up and buried my mother in their ecstatic bodies, must be transported away from here. Fast and far.
I go get the bombs. The damn suitcase is heavy. With a loud grunt I shove the bomb collection into Pyrrha’s main orifice. Immediately her doors shut. I’m overwhelmed by a strange grief. It ploughs through my chest. Tries to tear my lungs apart. But there’s no time. I run to the Mum stack, apologize in a haze of eye-wetting doubt, take the detonator, and then barely block Aphram’s path, demanding to let me in, to not drive off alone. Doing what I think he might do if not stopped.
Aphram will need me. I will assist him for once. The smart fucker will need my hands to remove the suitcase again. Me to hold the sensitive little matchbox so it won’t blow us all to pieces fifty yards from here.
He lets me in. Tells me to strap in and hold on.
Then he does his insanely fast sandbox jet trick while I hold the baby. We blast forward onto the desert floor.
“The smart caps are unstable,” Aph says in his normal voice.
“If one is triggered by that vintage radio you hold, we end as a moon crater.”
“I thought you were sick?” I say.
And he is. A sick piece of software.
“I am,” he says, “a ticking bomb myself. My light is fading. My island shrinking. I told you implicitly. Electronics don’t stutter. Lights go out without a sound. Most things end without a warning, but I was made for predicting outcomes. Including my expiration date. I have nowhere left to go. Today is the day.”
I can’t speak. I am not good at arguing. Distracted by the direction we’re heading.
“I wish we had more time,” I say.
“Thank you,” he says.
“Where are you going?”
I sound concerned. With these coordinates, we will slam straight into the north wall at maximum warp. Combining suicide with murder.
“Giving you the longest possible time,” he says.
I don’t get it. What does he mean? Eternity? Will he open a wormhole?
“Sit tight,” he says, “and trust me this one time, without knowing.”
Two seconds of unbearable silence. And then he says this.
“I tried speaking to Her. But ended up listening.”
We do the sideways parking job that is the signature move I will remember him by. Aphram parks with a gentle bump. The right side flat against the concrete wall. He adjusts half a metre. Grit raining on the cabin.
The dust settles.
“Get out,” he says, “and live a long and prosperous life, Kiko.”
I can’t find the courage to say I’m not Kiko.
I nod for a while, nose breathing too quickly, thinking of what to say.
Then I know.
“Aphram?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“May your particles be spread across galaxies.”
“Looking forward to it. And now fuck off before I burst into tears.”
I did. I walked away weeping. Doing my best to conjure up trust. To rise above the mourners ahead.
The sun was relentless. The town a steaming heap of dung drying up. I felt empty, dry, overheated. Speed walking with blinding tears. I couldn’t decide between breathing out or breathing in. But forced myself to stay solid. To not evaporate or turn to stone. I had to prepare for my final appearance. For the last act of clearing the path, of making us step back and not interfere. Not today.
The thud shook my bones. I didn’t look. Imagined particles rushing to all sides, heading to every possible destination.
It was the cannon starting the sequence. Breaching the castle wall. Ending the age of cannons and steel tubes spitting death and thunder. Every car once had a muffled roaring pipe. Planet-burning furnaces on wheels clogging every street.
I was back to walking. I was walking back to life. Life was coming out to play again.
Shimmering in the heat, She was. Soaking up the bombarding. Breathing in to exhale. More birds had arrived to celebrate with us.
This is not a mourning. It is the afternoon of the first cycle. Modest it will be. Still getting the hang of it. But for us, it is a big deal. The indicator of the turning.
They didn’t wait. Halfway there, I start to laugh as my vision is fulfilled. I saw this line. It was announced. This endless line of migrating crawlers. Huddled to give each other shade.
To even be able to travel the loose, hot desert sand, they leapfrog their way forward like a brook of life. A multi-stranded thread is braiding its way from the cathedral toward the breached wall. Aphram opened the garden gate for them. I guffaw over my wet cheeks. I laugh at the threshold of hurt. They crawl with so much eagerness. The exodus radiates pure joy. A joy that cools my being. Anointing my heart’s pleasure points with naughty excitement. The parade gives me permission to go deep. To shed all guilt and go in naked and protected at the same time.
My last task.
I run further. Ecstatic with my confirmation. This really is the day.
Auryn comes running toward me, sick with worry she is, angry with relief she is. Sweating she is. Her face red and swollen. She can’t speak and breaks down in my arms. She’s all wet and sticky and I hold her.
“We have to leave,” she says. Not procrastinating the bad news she thinks she has to break to me.
“It’s all lost!” she says, angry, frustrated. Her pain is real and deep. I can’t tell her yet.
“Even the crawlers are leaving,” she says, “there is no hope for this place. For the garden. We have to find somewhere else to land, to start over.”
Her voice flat and accepting and tired.
I shake my head. And keep shaking it. Until she begins to wonder.
“It is not what you think,” I say. And can’t help crying. Feeling with her.
“Yes it is,” she says. “We must face the truth, Liora.”
Yes, we do. And the truth is staring you in the overheated face, my dear mother. But I don’t have to convince her. Just hold her for a bit.
“Come,” I say, and we walk back together. I must let her find out for herself. Not tell her.
There are so many. Ten thousand ooze from the cathedral’s mandorla. I point out the swarm of birds speed racing the crest. Auryn looks up, frowning.
“She’s waking up,” I say. Which is not really what’s happening, but it sounds so good. It does the job. It sneaks in the little crack needed. Which is also not right. Nobody sneaks into a crack ever.
Auryn looks back along the sloppy line. Widening the inner fault line. Prepping for the breakthrough. The inner shaking. She looks back up at the towering truth, then at me. A hint of a smile, for only a second, then it sinks back into the sticky doom at the back of her throat.
Any minute now.
I lead the way to meet the mourning sisters, now deflated left and right of the wide exodus. Helping each other get the tape off. Exactly the kind of practical job us genans underestimate. Many walk around with the patches half off. Not willing to donate brows or lids or half their cheeks to the Gaffer god.
I find a good spot. Because I can sense the temperature drop. The undertone of contentment in the rising sap. Saturation. The walls glow in clear daylight. Changing the thing to a darker hue. Quickening the process. This is my cue.
I use my inner voice to call them to me. To draw their attention. I spread my arms and give them a wingspan Freckle would be proud of. Palms up.
It takes longer than I expected. But I hold still. Keep the tension. My chest heaving. I feel as if I levitate. And maybe I do. I catch Auryn’s eye before I close mine and go face up to start turning.
There it is. The gift of Her. The girls respond first.
Not sure what a hundred women’s slow mutual orgasm would sound and feel like, but this comes close. It is a release of the gentlest kind.
I dervish my way to Mum.
“It’s raining,” she says.
“Yes, it is, sweet mother.”
Gentle rain falls from a clear blue sky. I cannot stop.
“How?” she says.
“She’s doing it!” I scream. The girls get loud too. Telling each other what is happening on all frequencies.
“We can find out how exactly tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. There’s water beneath our feet, Auryn. It has been all this time. We’d just cut the flow. We walk on water, Auryn Tsukiko!”
I can’t keep circling her. Daring her to let go too. But she’s not fully there yet.
“She’s found the way. The path back up. She’s reconnected to the sky. There is no stopping Her, as long as we do not interfere.”
It now properly rains from vague cloud-like hazes just above the finished build. Added to by her chimneys, seeding them. And the area is spreading.
My eye catches activity. The sisters are alerted too. I stop, dizzy, unstable. It’s the end of the line. The parade of migrating crawlers is complete. The last ones have left the building. I get Auryn’s hand. I am nervous, too.
The dark entrance is difficult for Auryn. The contrast too big a jump. I see before her.
He’s limping. Looks awful. And the response traveling through the crowd is intense.
Auryn gives off a sound I have never heard from her.
She’s seen him too and starts running. Always the first responder.
“Eldon,” she cries.
He’s squinting his eyes. His arms carry the body of a girl. Khan is nearly gone.
Auryn breaks the distance. Girls catch the slipping load from him, and Auryn holds her man for the first time. He’s bad, but not bad enough to omit a laugh.
“She says she needs chocolate,” he mumbles. Giving me a smile from his battered face.
Yes, this was the day.