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CH. 15 pt. I

Uh’ dreams that night of creating the cosmos around Grotto. Clapping his hands to deliver stars and planets out into the nethers of space. It is beautiful and as he makes the beginnings of everything, a painful sob leaves his body. The colors and vistas he sends careening into the endless space are perfect, for what they are, and nothing could ever compete with them. He slams molecules into one another just to get reactions. He makes stars and black holes. Explosions. He spins galaxies on the end of his finger and lets them fly off to wherever they will. He drives solar systems. He constructs the sun he has known all his life. The sun warms the remains of his wings. iI has grown his food. He lovingly shapes the planet on which his feet have shuffled. He snaps his fingers and places the first male and female Upu in their underground cave system. He grows them red-moss and makes them animals to eat from and love. He does the same for the Naht-do. He gives both groups intelligence and watches them strive, but prevents either from space travel and both species are safe because the only finite resource is life.

Time speeds up in his dream, so much so that he cannot enjoy the children becoming adults, they die too soon, yet he is happy that he can't love them because that would be painful to have to watch as they fade away. Billions of people fill his world, and he knows they come and go. The Upu change the world he made. They pave up and out of the underground caves. They plant red-moss to supplement their growing population. Beautiful red grass and black horrible-smelling asphalt abound.

They are weak and stagnant, and he asks them, "because I made you, does that make me God?"

"Yes!" they cry in weak pathetic voices, “Now save us!”

Save you from what?

“From life!”.

"No," he replies and wakes up to the tapping of a metal rod on the stone wall of his cell, a blaring alarm and the smell of burning metal in his nose.

He lays on the bed in the penthouse cell trying to let the dream drain, it quickly does, but leaves behind a wicked headache.

The tapping is insistent. He rolls over and finds a disheveled assault troop in a black coverall uniform staring at him with more hatred than Uh' thought possible. The tapping is his projectile slinger. Black and gleaming and comfortably snug in the government Upu’s fist.

“Wakey wakey, Naht,” the voice doesn’t menace. It lilts more toward content-with-survival.

“What’s happening? Is something burning?”

“Just the world, Naht. Someone wants a word,” then a pause as if he wouldn’t mind a word himself. Uh’ wants to ask how many troops they lost, but he doesn’t as he thinks about why this might be happening. He expects to see a massacre has happened on the floor beneath him.

Brasso certainly wouldn’t have given him up so easily.

Neither did he, thinking suddenly about The Universe he wishes he could check, just once to see what he unleashed. Is it possible the thing was there now waiting to be turned on? Or something else... Like any living thing that had desires beyond expectation. Uncontainable.

He must have been moving too slow for the trooper, who lunges at him, grabs a wrist, and tugs him toward the lift cursing. It doesn’t stop Uh’ thinking maybe he could have done more with the limited amount of time he had. Something other than try and return Soya to life. No, he corrects. He did return her to life. His promise to Soya, satisfied. He tried. That’s all he needed to do, try. And in trying, did something. Uh’ thinks about what’s out there, either on the black box waiting for him to return and turn it back on, or free, a thing that may be alive. A thing trapped, unless it was indeed capable of more, then nothing would ever trap it.

They wait for the lift and when it arrives, on the way down, they stare at each other. Uh’ thinks of Techy, wondering if he were brave enough to try and escape. Then the doors open and he learns the answer is no, he didn’t manage that, to either escape or avoid the projectile that took off a portion of his skull.

The plop, plop, plop is blood leaking from the receptionist slumped over her desk. The air is thick with cordite. Little sparks fly from a control panel set into the stone wall. He doesn’t bother asking what happened as another corpse becomes visible as it’s dragged across the reception area. The body is of one of the dead University Security officers he passed just a few weeks ago. Well bits and pieces of him anyway are dragged from wherever he died.

“He was killed by drone. Just blew it up in his face. You know why? That one guard, killed twenty of us. The Elders left no expense unspent on this mission, including troopers. So many dead below it almost looks intentional,” The trooper talks like he accomplished something magnificent by making it through. And judging by the dead and damage on this level alone, he probably is right, Uh’ decides as he follows the trooper’s heavy boots down the red-rock corridor to Brasso’s office. The smoke increasing and the hollow boing of the alarm vibrating his skull as they go.

When they enter the office the trooper pushes him into the room and stands at the door, “he was where he said he’d be.”

An assault trooper with the rank of commander replies, “good. Alert the Elders. Shuhp Yee is alive.”

The trooper leaves and closes the door behind him, leaving Uh’, Brasso, and the commander alone. Brasso is the pile of sobbing Upu on the floor. He looks beaten, meaning much worse from the last time Uh’ saw him. His black fur is streaked with free flowing blood, flaps of fur, grey and white, hang from his body like a bag only half-filled with trash. He looks at Shuhp and his mouth, missing many of the stained yellow from smoke resin teeth, works as if searching for words.

But Uh’ knows what he wants to say. To blame him. Like it was Uh’s fault he was like this. His bulbous-belly jiggles under his clothes as he breathes hard and painfully. Uh’ is unsurprised with the Property dean’s appearance, he knows how the Upu spent the last ten or so glimpses, a kidnapper and a profitter off Soya legacy. The world was ending and if he wanted to make it through to the new one, he could have bid his time.

“How?”Brasso asks the question just with his eyes and Uh’ knows it was his work on the hive. The power drain, because managing energy was the crux of every epoch.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Energy was the same as money and when the University of Yee’s property management finger uses three times its normal amount is a red flag. The Universe was expensive. Simply turning her on drew light from bulbs.

The amount Uh’ went through to make her was simply astounding. It put them both on the map.

He wonders what Brasso lost. His obvious power showcased a wealth vast enough to waste Upu lives for, maybe even put him on par with the Elders in terms of potential. With Uh’s help, maybe even eventually able to buy elections. Take Soya’s place on the chancellery. Return Uh’ to the glory he had known for most of his life. Could he have made Brasso great?

Maybe.

But none of that was going to happen now. He over spent, by allowing the birth of the universe to happen under his unknowing watch.

Brasso’s tongue wags in his mouth as if searching the air for a clue how to begin, when finally it works and he says, “we lost.”

“We?” Uh’ returns with as much denial as he can muster.

Brasso’s eyes hold a look of fear and need. As if begging Uh’ to go along with him, like this was his only way to save himself, blame the slave and hope for the best. He wears what would pass as business attire under the plastic overalls, but both are destroyed from him being tortured.

The commander steps forward as if just looking for an excuse to start talking, “Do you want to know how we found you? Ingenious actually. Without the power surges we never would have even looked at a lowly Property dean. Turns out he is one of the more powerful criminal kingpins on the planet. Our main question? Where did the power go? We never expected to find anything belonging to Soya Yee here. Something about catching two blood flies with one swoop, am I right?”

Does Uh’ smile then? Or warn those present of the thing he trapped in the blackbox? No, he simply averts his eyes and stares into Majt from out the window. Smoke billows from down below. He could have warned the commander, but what little difference it would make to what's happening below stills his tongue. Everything Soya had built was being erased. And when the Elders found The Universe on the hive they would delete her also. As an old Upu surrounded by the Elder’s elite soldiers, running to ensure her safety, not possible.

And if he gained freedom, what’s happening down there anyway? How bad would it be to walk those streets, of needing and knowing just the going from A to B could be it. He doesn’t want to go down there and find out. He is a soft old Upu who would rather die than suffer.

The commander steps over Brasso toward Uh’, “down there is the death of Reduce and Protect and the rise of the Elder’s Grotto. A work Soya built but others will take credit for. We found you because of the amount of data coming from here. We didn’t know it was you, but should have. Only one person ever created so much glut. And we knew she was dead. But you? Alive and just as greedy..”

Uh’ finds himself bored in the face of discovery. He had no plans other than placing Soya into his Spatial Folding equation. With that done he waits to die and all that death means is his imprisonment is over. His work on resurrecting Soya, done. Whether successful or not, he has nothing left to do.

Then the University of Yee Property management finger shimmies from a huge explosion down below.

“More of my soldiers are coming.”

Brasso turns over and moans, “Once you’re dead they’ll arrest the Elders. Anyone not worth labor will be gassed. The rest and anyone you ever loved forced into the mines.” Brasso somehow manages to chuckle a sound that feels real. “Commander, you should never have come here.”

The commander turns and points his reader at one of the windows and a scene of violence appears. Upus running from black-uniformed Majt police. Upu and Naht-do fighting openly.

“Who will arrest the Elders when it is the Elders doing the arresting?” the commander asks, laughing, his forces easily handling the new wave of criminals trying to free their boss.

Brasso answers by screaming as if lunging from a high place, then has his beckoner pointed at Uh’.

“If I can’t have him neither can you!”

Uh’ realizes it is the same beckoner Techy pulled from Soya’s body as he depresses its button. Where he had it hid, Uh’ does not know, but what he does know is he has never felt this much pain in his entire life. Thankfully it ends a short moment later, as, after a stern kick from the commander, the beckoner flies from Brasso’s hand shattering against the stone wall.

The alarm and the smoke. His pulse quickens. He senses the danger even before the building violently shimmies again.

The Commander turns back to face his prisoners, "Why won’t your men quit?”

“They have no reason to. I feed them. All you promise is to break them against the wheel of labor.”

The building drops again. It's violent and Uh’ crashes to the floor.

Brasso screams in fear and pulls his knees up close to his chest, as if that will stop what’s coming. "Please help me!" the former dean begs.

He answers, “sure, I’ll help,” then beats Brasso down with blows from his shiny black baton until he is an Upu shaped puddle on the floor. When finished Braso gasps for air, and tries to stand. Obviously unwilling to let his story end here, he probably wants to fight as hard as an out-of-shape obese Upu can. No matter how shitty a life, that was always the attitude, and Brasso’s would have been pretty shitty if allowed to live.

But still he tries, “Please, I found him for you. The terrorist’s slave, that is Shuhp Yee, the greatest math mind that has ever lived. Without me he’d be dead, glimpses ago.”

And the Commander stops beating him long enough to say, “I know, stupid. We never wanted him alive. He’s dangerous, his is a living memory of Soya. His only value is to serve a point. But you? You, have no worth” The commander then unholsters his projectile-slinger and fires a round into Brasso’s skull.

Brasso, property dean and former gambling addict, criminal mastermind, collapses dead.

With a huff of dismissal, the commander calls for assistance over his comm and at once a couple assault troops arrive. He points to Uh’ and says, “Take him to a noose. Let the world watch Soya’s slave hang. Slaves earn obscurity. Isn’t that the old saying? Soya’s legacy demands that, because once dead she won’t matter anymore.”

Uh’ disagrees. Soya Yee was important in history and all Upu and Naht-do know that. “What will happen after they watch me die?”

“The ones that loved Soya will redouble their efforts, most likely, and mince themselves against the death machine the elders have built to protect themselves.”

Then the commander laughs and claims it’s the most ludicrous thing he has ever said. “That’s the way it will go, huh? Take him, do it before it’s too late and he unleashes Soya’s versions of Reduce and Protect.” and the commander laughs hard as if this is the funniest thing ever.

Uh’ is dragged from the office and the finger and thrust into the back of a waiting Magcart. The laughter echoes and follows him into the metal box, only stopping when the door locks freedom away forever. The ride is violent and with no windows he can only guess why, but eventually Uh’ is shoved into a paddock and the first thing he notes about his new home is it smells like the ancestral ordure that helped the Upu build up from their subterranean caves millions of orbits before. The vast fields of guano, sweet with ammonia and the billions of beings fluttering above, growing and feeding and breeding and most importantly of all shitting. Because it is in the shitting where their real development came. The fingers for the moss to grow on. The moss that is eaten and modified, through manipulation, to eventually give them the stars.

Instead of a long time ago, where rules were primitive, he is among 300,000 prisoners somewhere under Majt wondering why he isn’t dead yet. He counts the number of prisoners based on the number of paddocks he can see and estimates those around him. In the enclosure, he finds himself, there are twelve because the 13th Upu on the scaffolding is always the hangman. Some are worse off than others, but all are dressed in the famous white prison rags, excluding himself, as he still wears the warm comfortable clothing Brasso provided. They took his belt before loading him into the magcart and he has to hold them up. They are made of soft transparent scythe-fabric and rustle when he moves. The rustling fabric makes him think of wings hanging in the air. There are wings present, useless slabs of flesh stuck to the back of the Upu moving toward the scaffolding in front. He shivers with shock and dry cold, is this the end? He expected to die one day. He wasn’t holding out hope for being saved. He is old. Old Upu die, that’s what they do, and He expected Brasso to kill him. He expected Brasso would have to kill him one glimpse, especially when he found out Uh’ would have failed him like he failed Soya. Soya, nothing but numbers pushed into Spatial-Folding. There and not. He never thought his tormenter would die himself, killed instead of arrested. “Another victim of mob violence,” the commander promised. “Part of the plan.”

He can almost smile at the memory of Brasso being murdered. Yet one shot and his old hell ended and a new hell began. Funny how chaos works.

He controls the future of numbers and still finds himself surprised this is how it will end for him, stretched from a rope. Not tortured, or interrogated, just deemed a worthy old man, and sentenced to die.

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