The crow ruffled his feathers and quorked at the disturbance. He cocked his head and listened. The still air was stuffy, dusty with memories of hay bales stacked to the ceiling, long since removed. Spiders danced on their spindly legs as they wove intricate silken patterns in the ceiling, blissfully unaware they could become snacks at any moment, but the crow paid them no mind for now. The crossbeams of the old barn were dry and pitted with age, but still provided ample room for perching, for watching. A sharp crack split the silence and the crow flapped twice in annoyance. He hopped further out onto the beam, careful to not draw the attention of the beast below. It was some kind of dragon, the crow was almost certain of it. Its wings had been clipped, robbed of the freedom of the skies. Some penance for dark deeds done no doubt; for now it crept along the ground on round, rolling feet, cursed to forever travel with its nose in the dirt. It spent its time in hibernation, only waking when the Man came to visit. He would pet it with an old rag, careful to remove the accumulated dust from its black polished shell. Occasionally the Man would climb into its ear and then it would awaken with a loud, rumbling roar, shaking the entire barn. It would spit smoke and fire and the Man would curse and shout. Then they would be off to enact any number of evils upon the world leaving behind a terrible, acrid smell that would linger for hours. Another blast from outside and a splintered hole appeared in the wall. A sudden skittering circled around the perimeter of the dragon’s lair. Footsteps approached quickly and the doors flung open. The Man stood silhouetted in the doorway, his frame casting a long shadow over the beast in the dying rays of sunlight. He clutched a long wood and metal tube before him, the last light of dusk glinting off its nickel plating, wisps of smoke curling from its mouth. His breathing was labored and he was dragging one foot behind him. The crows eyes were transfixed to the Man’s side. His plaid shirt was tattered and stripped away at the waist, a long gash ran along his abdomen oozing with thick, foul blood. The crow hopped once in alarm but dared not call out and reveal his location. Even from his perch atop the rafters, he could sense the miasma of corruption emanating from that wound. Only one creature he knew caused a wound like that. The Man had run afoul of a Skillijak. He must have seen the warning signs of the nearby lair, the fallen boughs in crossed pattern just beyond the edge of the treeline, each one placed with deliberate promise of the violence and woe contained within. The birds built no nest from those branches and needles, the creatures of the field sought no seeds or twigs for bruxing from that trove. Yet whether by ignorance or arrogance, the Man had disturbed the creature’s solace. The Man staggered against the dragon, fumbling in his pockets for his talisman with which to wake the beast. Black veins seethed and pulsed from the tear at his side, ichor bubbled and seeped from the gash. The Man coughed and spun about wildly, pointing his stick menacingly at the doorway. Thunder boomed and pealed from the mouth of the tube which hurt the crow’s ears as the Man shouted into the darkness. His eyes frantically scanned the tall grasses waving lazily in the twilight breeze, uncaring to his plight. Sudden movement caught the eye of the crow. Whipcord thin, a sinewy limb probed out from the edge of the nearby field. A dark, oily cloud quivered and shook with anticipation behind the weeds, all that was visible of the creature tensing, preparing to strike. A second limb crept forward, then a third, planting themselves in the ground to launch the Skillijak forward in one fell motion. The Man retreated to the dragon’s ear, pleading with it, imploring it to wake up and carry him away from his present danger. The sun set impossibly fast, shrouding the barn in gloom as the moon took watch over the evening. The dragon whined a rhythmic groan, oblivious to the present peril. The Man pleaded as the dragon whined and clicked again, it’s eyes alight with a dim glow for a brief moment before returning to its slumber. Movement at the barn door drew the crow’s gaze. The Skillijak was just around the corner, long bristles shining in the moonlight damp with the fervor of the hunt. Sensing danger, the Man swung around. He peered into the night for a moment then reached into his pocket and produced a small flame. The realm of men was curious like that. Long ago they had conquered the elements, summoning fire, wind, lightning and water at their call, reshaping the earth into all manner of bizarre creations. Yet even with all their power, they hungered for more. They wrestled and contended with Nature herself, to subdue the world in their grand designs. Their war was not going well. The Man struggled to hold himself, the flame and his booming stick all at once. The vorpal toxin of the Skillijak worked quickly and the Man was losing strength. He propped himself up against the plush innards of his dragon and brandished his weapon. A flash and another boom split the air. Then again, and again. The crow screamed and retreated further into the shadows of the barn. The smell of the dragon’s blood permeated the air, noxious and pungent. It seemed the Man had wounded his pet, but if so, it made no sound, gave no cry of dismay. A bloodchilling screech pierced the air sounding doom. Needlelike appendages shot forth from the darkness, a furious whirlwind of razor-sharp death launched into the barn. The Man screamed as the Skillijak shrieked, their cries a discordant harmony rising to cacophonous pitch. The Man’s scream cut off in a choked gurgle as wet splashes pattered upon the floor. Amidst the crunches and slaps, the flame fell from the Man’s grasp. Discarded straw burst alight and began to spread. All at once, the dragon’s blood that had been dribbling from its hindquarters roared into a massive conflagration. The Skillijak hissed in surprise and pain and retreated from the towering inferno and slipped into the chill of the night. Through it all, the dragon remained still. The crow cawed in respect to the silent vigil, standing watch in the midst of its owner’s funeral pyre. The crow took wing and exited the barn which had begun to catch fire as well. He perched on a nearby elm tree and watched as the firelight glinted in his beady eyes. Off in the distance, he heard the Skillijak retreat into its web, whisper soft into the night to lie in wait once more.
When I close my eyes, she opens hers. I can see her, looking into the mirror of the gulf that divides us. I remember the way her lips form the letters of the words she’s trying to tell me, but I can’t remember the sounds. Each second of a syllable is a snapshot frozen in time, the zoetrope rotates around and around repeating the same pattern but their words are lost to the cosmic roar, forever diffusing throughout the continuum.
I see her upon a hill, I stand with her, in her spot displaced by generations. She stands, hand outstretched toward the sunset battered clouds, baring their bruises of purple and pink as the light disappears beyond the witch-wild horizon. Through her fingers – golden streams of light trickle like a stream expelling its lifeblood down the ancient channels that shaped it, carried it, nurtured it from birth. Emerald sheafs of native grasses bow in playful repose to the gently shifting zephyrs.
A seed planted at her feet in days of youth, she rests her hand upon the sapling as I sit in the low slung branches and contemplate the lives we’ve lived, the roads we’ve traveled to end up overlooking the same ever changing valley. A seed in her time, a tree in mine as the aether of existence courses along its xylem sentience.
Seasons crash like moth’s wings around her shoulders, icicles shattered upon the frozen ground and dust swept silently upon a flitting filigree. The stillness of a summer sojourn sends twisters tearing through time to my terrible temporary torpor.
She stands atop the hill, the dying rays of sunlight streaming through her fingers as she languidly lounges along the river of inevitability, flowing from one instant to the next in a steady, even course. She turns and smiles at me but I was never there, I’m further along the course naturally, but I am looking at me through her eyes a hundred years past to a present in a hundred years future.I open my eyes and I’m alone, but she has closed hers and looks through mine. This is the world she thought she’d never live to see, this is the life that follows the pattern of the cyclical weaves that repeat each instance again and again but never the same as before. The life lived a hundred years distant follows the same stream, snags in the same eddies, all that’s changed is the date, which has changed everything. She turns to leave the hill and I stay to watch a while longer. The stars arrive to bear mute witness to the ages and generations between us, our lives separated by no more than a glimmer by their reckoning. The wind catches her dress and whisks her down the hill, the silent flurries caress her shoulders and nip at my cheeks as her hand brushes against the young tree whose boughs I’ve climbed to seek my solitude. The sun exits with a deep, formal bow, a grand finale punctuated by the drawing of a cape to reveal night’s majesty. The air is warm and humid, resting in gorged decadence from the day’s bounty. She left with the sweet scent of Spring in her step, I smell the rich, amber aroma of loamy Autumn with mushrooms hidden beneath the deciduation of Summer.
Our course is a river, one tributary to the next our lives wend and roam soaking up colors from the palette of the wilds. The branches snake off innumerable, us in essence but we are not those paths, those lakes and streams belong to the we who followed a different choice, once made and made a million times more. But our path, one path with countless variations, tethered by a tree, by a seed planted in days of youth. I sleep and I dream her life, or perhaps she sleeps and dreams mine.
The walls shuddered with the impact of another projectile. Massive boulders rained down on the city launched by siege engines Falion didn’t think were within the technological imagination of the Laorin. As the midday sun beat down, he could make out their long, spindly forms massing in the fields beyond the wall. Laorin wasn’t the name they had for themselves, rather it was borne of disregard for a subjugated race. Falion didn’t believe anyone in the city knew their true name or cared to at this point. The price of that hubris crashed into the city walls again and again, sending shockwaves through the streets. For generations the Laorin had been nothing more than howling brutes, reduced to keening in the forests to the east. They would occasionally venture out in raiding parties, preying on merchants traveling the Royal Highway and the woodsmen in the logging camps at the border, but such attacks were sporadic and disorganized. Falion stared in awe of the engineering marvels in the distance and the single minded malice that must have spawned them. Like all Laorin structures, they were planted and grown, their purpose sung to them as they took root, their shapes tended by the scions of the forest. Primitive, but effective.
The living constructs were a divergence from anything Falion knew about the Laorin people. Despite their arboreal appearance, these atrocities lurched forward as their roots plunged into the soil and propelled them forward. They were monstrous in appearance, no doubt twisted by the distilled hatred of oppression. He could hear the din of battle far away, but slowly drawing nearer. He imagined the clamor and chaos of the general populace gathered in terror at the docks, the unimaginable press of bodies fighting, clawing, tearing at each other to board the evacuation ships in the harbor. He didn’t know how many ships were in port, but it wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough. The Laorin would descend upon them in wrath and fury. A boulder crashed into a building near him, shards of stone pelting him and choking him with dust. He wouldn’t be caught like so many of the panicked masses. His path took him up to the castle keep and the secret escape tunnel his guild had been tasked with cutting into the foundation. Many months of digging a path through the rock to cut a path all the way to the cliffs and from there, a sharp descent to a hidden cove from which the prince’s skiff could quickly catch the currents north toward the capital. Falion himself had drafted the plans for the mechanism that released the hatch on the false wall in the armory. He had no illusions that the prince’s boat would be waiting for him, but a few rowboats that had carried supplies to the ship would still be lashed within the protected alcove. Falion ran along the main avenue toward the castle until his lungs burned and his legs ached. He wasn’t out of shape by any means but he was accustomed to leisurely errands across the city for his master, not endless sprinting the guild halls like the early days of his apprenticeship. Shouts erupted from the square ahead and he ran faster. Shouting meant soldiers, soldiers meant safety and safety at the moment meant one more thing between him and the city walls.
A command post had been set up hastily in the center of the square. From there, dispatches and reinforcements could be sent down the three main arteries of the city, the western road toward the docks, the southern road toward the living quarters and the eastern road toward the walls and the heaviest fighting. Nobody paid Falion any mind as he ran through the square, another refugee scrambling for cover.
Suddenly, boulders crashed into the street he had just come from. He dropped to the ground and covered his head as rubble and debris showered down around him. Susurrations filled the air followed by a low moaning. A sickly sweet scent drifted his direction and made him gag, like orchids rotting in the sun. Shambling forms lurched forward toward the massed soldiers who stood in shock. The Laorin were a tall, graceful people and these monstrosities had clearly been made in their image. Standing as tall as two men, twisting branches and vines formed the carapace that held together a soft, spongy substance that formed the bodies of these creatures. Two blotches on the head made for eyes and tendrils and gills fanned open to form a sort of mouth. From within that maw came a hissing gurgle, like water through a broken, rusty pipe.
Arrows whistled through the air and sank deep into the soft flesh causing the creatures to recoil, but continue their charge. Their arms were a tangled mess of vines that suddenly lashed together to form dagger points as they thrust into the shield wall with tremendous force. Pikes stabbed deep gouges but the creatures flailed back and forth, batting them away. Their trunk like legs kicked into shields, breaking arms and sending men flying. From atop their heads, more vines wriggled in the sunlight, then bound together tightly into sharp spikes and whipped forward, piercing through leather and mail.
Falion turned and ran as fast as he could. He rounded a corner and skidded to a halt. He had distantly wondered what he would do if he reached the portcullis and found it closed. In all his life he had only ever seen it raised, but what he saw before him made him start. The seemingly impenetrable iron wrought gate was twisted and ripped from its housing. Vines like ivy sprouted from the flagstone itself and climbed the stone archway on either side and wrapped around the thick bars. He knew the Laorin were capable of commanding plants to spontaneous growth, but this was different to the shambling horrors he had left behind in the square. Even with their immense strength, it would have taken hundreds to rip the gate down, much less warp the metal into scrap. To Falion’s eye the vines had peeled the gateway open like an overripe fruit. Falion stood in mute amazement, then looked around wildly. There were no signs of battle, no bodies littering the courtyard, no disorder at all. Suddenly feeling very exposed, he hurried through the gate. As he passed underneath the archway, he noticed the ivy was speckled with red and brown spots. Pushing it from his mind, he continued to run until he was able to enter the keep through the smaller side door just beyond the royal stable. Once inside, he was struck by the utter silence that assaulted him. The keep was usually heavily trafficked, dignitaries and diplomats clogging the main halls and a veritable army of servants rushing about their errands. Silence greeted him, the halls empty and abandoned.
There was an eerie heaviness in the kitchens, a sense of wrongness about the room. No sounds came to his ears, even the ever present crash of projectiles had fallen away. His footsteps echoed loudly in his ears as he gingerly picked his way across the kitchen. When he approached the far door, he noticed something amiss. From one of the high windows, ivy spilled into the room, spreading out across the wall and behind the cupboards. Falion peered closer at the red and brown spots on the ivy leaves, as if it was afflicted by some kind of blight. There were no signs of dramatic destruction like at the gatehouse, Falion wondered why the plant would have spread in here. He shook his head, he had neither the time nor expertise to theorize about such matters.
Falion moved into the hallway and quickly made his way down the spiral stairs to the armory. There were no torches lit in the sconces and he cursed himself for not thinking to bring one from the workshop. He debated returning to find one, but remembered that even the ovens were extinguished and none of the braziers he had passed were lit during the day. Huffing with annoyance, he continued down the stairs into the gloom. There would be windows in the armory if he remembered the technical drawings correctly, but the stairwell was shrouded in darkness. Another renovation project to add to the list, assuming the castle was still standing after the battle. Assuming he ever returned. As he descended, the air became fetid and warm. He held a hand to the wall and it came away slick with some viscous liquid. Falion felt a pit in his stomach, suddenly unsure if he’d prefer a light to see what he was touching. He wiped his hands on his jerkin and stepped into the armory. His heel slid from underneath him. Whatever had coated the walls was covering the floor as well. A noxious stench wafted up and he nearly retched. Twin beams of light shone sickly and dim from the slitted windows on the near wall to his left. He looked to see the windows were choked with the same ivy he had seen before, wending its way across the walls and wrapping around the arms and armor stored against the wall. The steel blades, bucklers and breastplates were crushed and bent at horrible angles, faring no better than the iron gate he had passed through before. Some sort of brackish brown liquid was dripping from the ivy, oozing across the flagstones. He stepped cautiously, careful not to slip in the muck underfoot and made his way to the hidden alcove near the furthest corner. Storage crates had been stacked to conceal the opening, but they now were pushed aside with reckless abandon exposing the open portal, no doubt by the prince and his entourage as they made their way to the tunnel. An unlit torch hung in a sconce nearby with flint and a steel knife on one of the crates that hadn’t been upset. Falion lit the torch and stepped inside.
Falion dropped from the entrance into the tunnel. He was below the foundations of the castle now, brick and mortar which rested upon the very bones of the earth. When he had reviewed the blueprints for the castle keep, his mind filled with angles and dimensions, materials and counterbalances that would erect the tallest spires that one might stand atop and brush the face of god. There was no consideration for the land his construction sat upon other than was it stable and could it potentially be quarried. When they had broken ground into the abandoned catacombs beneath the city, it was a curiosity at best, tested for its structural integrity and then blocked off to secure the passage for the prince. That blockage was pulled apart now, and a soft light flickered within. Falion was eager to put the horrors of the day behind him and breathe deep the salty air of freedom, but something pulled at him. He felt his senses dull and his head become foggy. His limbs felt heavy and he dropped them to his side, his fingers letting the torch fall to the ground. His feet carried him into the opening without his conscious involvement. He looked down in lethargic stupor and saw the ivy covering the floor of the crypt, covering the skulls of a long forgotten people. He was compelled forward, entranced by the light dancing on the walls. He saw a golden orb floating before his eyes, then another one. The air was filled with hundreds, thousands of the delicate puffballs. They were ushering him forward, pulling him against his will into the light.
And then he saw the prince. His body shredded, his retinue impaled on massive thorns rising from the floor in a circle around a carved symbol. A Laorin loomed over them, his golden eyes narrow slits fixed on Falion. His elongated skull was crowned with a ring of flowers and leaves. Falion saw his pale skin was mottled with the same red and brown splotches he had seen on the ivy outside, the same ivy that surrounded him now, growing from his very limbs. A Scion. “Ah. Another human.” The Laorin’s gentle lilting voice chimed in Falion’s ears. “You spread like an infestation. No matter. You have followed the enticement spores like an insect to a pitcher plant, now you will bear witness to the downfall of your people, as I have borne witness to the downfall of mine.” Falion’s tongue felt numb, he struggled to make words. The spores continued to surround him. The Scion peered into Falion’s eyes as if studying a new species. “Your presence upsets the natural order of things, human. I am here to restore the balance. This is inevitable. I am inevitable.” The Scion took a dagger from one of the guards and ran it along his arms until milky white fluid began to spill from them, mixing with the blood in the circle. He held out his hands for Falion to see the pustules and decay eating away at them. “The blight will consume us all. Too long have your people ripped apart this world with your iron and fire, turned the water toxic, the air foul. See what your hatred has done to this world, see what our hatred has done to us. A balance must be struck, through blood and through chlorophyll. The land will purge the toxins and the pattern shall begin anew. We will regrow, and that is enough for us. See the remnants of your ancestors around us, this cycle has transpired countless times before.” He gestured to the rows and rows of skulls all around them. The Scion regarded Falion with an unknowable gaze. “I am glad you are here, human. Perhaps we may end this cycle in time.” A delicate lattice of pink flowers grew from the Scion’s hands. “Take this, it will protect you from the miasma. Go now, and bear witness to the truth you have seen.” Falion took the daisy chain lattice and held it to his face. He felt his senses come rushing back to him. A deep rumble echoed through the tunnel and the effluvia upon the ground began to bubble and roil. Black roots spread and writhed along the ground, burrowing into the soil, cracking stone and forcing Falion to retreat. A low moan emanated from the ground and from the center of the symbol a flower sprang forth and grew wild and recklessly from stalk to bud in a moment. The petals swelled and shuddered in their labor pains. All at once, a torrent of white spores burst forth, filling the chamber and exploding violently through the layers of rock above them. Where they settled on the bodies littering the ground they began to dissolve the flesh and reduce the forms to mulch. As the walls began to collapse around them, the Scion held up a hand in final farewell, blossoms sprouting from his arm where the spores landed. Falion turned and ran through the tunnel, his feet finding their way unsteadily as the earth rumbled its protestations. He ran headlong scraping and banging off walls in his desperate flight. A light shone ahead, beckoning him out into the sunlight and with one last effort he was on a cliff overlooking the sea. From the tunnel behind him, white spores drifted out and caught upon the wind, falling softly, gently to the harbor below. Where they brushed past his face, they were repelled by the daisy chain the Scion had given him. He couldn’t see, but imagined the last survivors looking to the sky in awe at the sudden deluge, then wonder turning to horror as they watched their skin turn splotchy and black, nutrients for a ghastly crop. He fell to his knees and began to sob. He imagined human and Laorin standing face to face and dropping their weapons as their conflict was rendered meaningless beneath the white flurry blanketing the earth in the appearance of fresh fallen snow. All the hopes and dreams, ambitions and prayers of both peoples blanketed in an empty canvas for the world to start anew.
His heart pounded, a red hot ball of molten iron squeezed in the vice of his ribcage. Cold fire raced down his left arm threatening to consume him. He coughed to clear his airway, ragged and wet spines on the way out, stalagmites piercing the fleshy roof in a concerto of pain on the way in. Blood spattered against the interior of his environment suit. He fell to the hard packed earth beneath a sickly orange sky, tarnished and stained by the scrap metal fires leaching out the precious heavy metals.
“Please remain calm operator 44318. You are experiencing a medical emergency.”
The auto-monitor hovered over him, its singular orb reflecting his agony through the crimson streaked face shield.
“Aid is being administered. Remain still.”
A long proboscis emerged from the floating drone and extended menacingly to the emergency input port on the hip of his suit.
“Remain calm.”
The probe struck lightning quick, stabbing into the open port and into his flesh like a shimmering, silvery mosquito about to gorge on so much exposed flesh, but just enough.
The pinprick stung deep into the muscle and burning embers of pain radiated from the injection site growing into a roaring conflagration that burned the pain out of him, two towering infernos that battled over his charred and desperate corpse.
He knew they’d never let him die.
The probe withdrew its applicator, drops of his humanity still glistening from the tip.
“Treatment complete. Your account has been updated. Total balance now stands at two hundred twenty four thousand eight hundred forty four credits. Calculating…estimated time remaining in contract now twelve years, fifteen weeks, four days and eleven hours. Please return to work in a timely fashion to avoid further time-debt accruals.”
His breath came slower, more even. Solvents sprayed at his faceplate from the inside, cleaning his blood off the transparasteel. He propped himself up with his telescoping boom and saw his vision swim before him. He doubled over and put his head between his legs. He couldn’t let the drone return, he couldn’t take another twelve years stirring blackened bits of waste metal, breaking down the debris into more useful base materials. He dug the forked end into the ground and looked at the mountains of scrap and decay around him. Pole in hand, he imagined Charon on the river Styx, ferrying souls of the damned to their final desolation and torment.
Figures moved through the orangish yellow haze. A small gathering of amorphous blobs like himself stood nearby, other lost souls running out the clock that had been ticking for far too long. Any time one of their number fell, they gathered to kindle the hope that one of them could finally escape, one of them could finally be free of their shackles. They returned to fumbling about with their mindless tasks.
He looked up at the impossibly tall mound before him. Corroded and bent pieces jutted out in millions of grotesque angles, a monument to the sins of a world that had long forgotten him, long moved on to better pastures.
Mars thrived, the high altitude bacteria strengthening the atmosphere and promising an end to the underground shelters and biodomes dotting the surface. The red planet was turning green as sunlight refracted across the manufactured sky and lit up the days in a brilliant emerald, a byproduct of the sun’s distance and light phase shift the climatologists claimed. Soon, children could run outside and lay upon an alien grass and never know the world their forebears had choked and poisoned, never know the hurricanes of smoke and weeks of duststorms that only settled far out over the brackish and congealed oceans, turning them to sludge in a runaway acidification effect, never know the planet where the wretched now toiled in perpetual despair. Too poor to have afforded a place on the great Ark ships that hovered in orbit, too hale to survive the waves of plague and famine that had preceded the perfection of their environmental suits.
The first medibots were promised to be a deliverance from suffering, they instead became the marshals upon the plains of Purgatory, casting all the unworthy souls back into their penance.
He stirred in a nearby pile of ash and soot and the ground shook beneath his feet as a repulsorlift transport skimmed low overhead. He looked away from the bright lights of the fusion reaction that powered the unmanned craft and felt a pang in his chest as teardrops spattered against the inside of his faceshield. As he blinked to clear his vision, he remembered her last words.
They had chanced upon a crashed transport so long ago, its engines firing intermittently in final death spasms. Sirens immediately began whining in the distance and securibots hummed to life to cordon off the area. They saw their opportunity and had raced for it before any of their steel wardens could arrive.
“We go together” she had said as they ran, but he could hear the high pitched screech of the securibots closing in behind them.
“Just go, I’m right behind you!” he had shouted.
“Promise me” she had said as they ran for salvation, “Promise me I’ll see you on the other side.”
“I promise, we’ll be together again soon my love” he gasped as they drew near the blinding flare.
Then she was gone in a flash of light and smoke as the plasma jets from the engine engulfed her. The ground heaved and he was lifted off his feet as a blast of fire and radiation knocked him backwards. He had only been two steps behind her, she had always been faster when they used to run through the sweet smelling fields of poppies in the summer, but the engines coughed and gasped, the light extinguished. The securibots crested the ridge behind him. He staggered to his feet and ran headlong into the wreckage, desperate to follow his wife. He ignored every twinge, every ache and stitch of his many years crying out. His blood pounded in his ears as his feet flashed on the glassy ground beneath him. He launched himself head back, arms spread wide in exultation as he impaled himself on the twisted, molten struts and for a moment, there was unimaginable agony and then a soft, warm numbness as his vision faded.
A sudden gasp filled his lungs and he stared up at the spotless steel orb of the auto-monitor hovering over him. He looked down at the still smoldering repair in his environment suit. He screamed against the ignominy of his resurrection by the prowling observers, his sardonic saviors. She was gone, and he was still here.
“Unauthorized early terminations will result in additional time debt penalties operator 44318. Operator 44317’s account has been added to your own. Your balance stands at one million, four hundred fourteen thousand…” Tears streamed down his face as the auto-monitor had reproachfully droned over him.
Years later, his hands still shook at the memory, her words still echoing in his mind. He couldn’t remember how long it had been, how many revivifications, how many additions and penalties and fees since he had been steps behind her. Throes of panic writhed through him. He hugged his head, desperate to feel his face, his head, his hair again with his own hands. Did he even have hair anymore? He would never know, he would never feel the warmth of another’s embrace, another’s touch in companionship or malice. Only the autoinjectors let him know he was still capable of feeling, that he still had skin.
A sudden pressure and then the feeling subsided. The suit had administered more anti-anxiety meds then flashed a warning that he was building a tolerance and repeated offenses would result in time-debt accrual.
He looked balefully from his valley of corruption. He could stir a pile the wrong way, send tonnes of metal careening toward him, an avalanche of blades and shards and sweet surrender. The suit would protect him, just as it always had. The triple-layered nanex polymer was nearly impervious to rips, tears, stabs, burns, corrosion, explosion, and erosion. In event of a long fall or sudden impact, the nanites would respond faster than the speed of thought, cushioning the blow with the inner gel layer and stiffening into traction to protect the spinal cord. It didn’t matter anyway. The medbots could fix any ailment, any injury, stop the slow ravages of time, even turn back death itself.
He pushed the thought from his mind. He had stabbed and shot and blasted and fired his environmental suit but it was no use. It provided all he needed intravenously: nutrients, medicines, mood enhancers free of charge on major holidays. It was the perfect system to keep him in perfect working health, year after year, century after century until his time ran out, his clock stopped ticking. He lowered his head and got back to work.
The Three Cobras Confessional 