Dear Riff or Riff-Alicia or Alicia or whatever name you want to be called,
It’s me, Gram.
I have seen you on the streams, but I can’t be sure if it’s you or a hologram. My residential manager back on the factory station told me that holograms were a myth, that we didn’t possess the tech for that. Do you remember her? She had illegal genetic mods to make her skin blue, but they didn’t take and instead just scarred her whole body. She was so shiny and smooth. They had to remove her eyelids. Only the whites of her eyes were blue, the rest of her was just pink. I’m surprised The Corporation granted her stay of retirement being that ugly.
We used to hide from her in the hygiene chamber and kiss. Do you remember that?
I remember when you first came to the factory. You were a real Earth girl. You were so still when they brought you out. You were so compact. So brown from the sun. Your fingers were still damaged from the ride up on The Needle, still bleeding. I knew they would assign you to me. I prayed to Mechoben that they would. I went to the prayer box and put my face against the pads and whispered into the squeak hole. When the Worm came out and fed me the Red Scream Cream-flavored Shine, I knew my prayer had been answered.
Now that Mechoben has been martyred by The False One, I don’t know where my prayers are going. I guess I can pray to you. That’s what this message is. A prayer.
I am a farmer now under Al’s new plan. They have shipped in some men from the asteroid mining facility to help. They are no help. Three of them died within the first week. I know The Corporation frowns on the word “die” but we had to put their bodies on the rocks by the ocean to be taken away by the Shriekers. I remember someone telling me that they used to bury bodies. What a waste. At least with the Shriekers we can net one and cook their wings on the transformer.
The seeds aren’t growing here.
The men they send are covered in sores. Their mouths fill up with blood. They choke on the high oxygen air, and their bones break as soon as they step off the transport. Some of them are so space sick the sun makes them scream. I bring them into the house, and they bleed all over the linens. They vomit. Only one is strong enough to help me plant, and he stands too close to me when I make Shrieker broth for the others, lined up on the floor like batteries in a pack. He touches my hair sometimes. I have to push a dresser in front of my door at night.
We really need help. I know that Al listens to you. I have seen your arms around their waist. It must be you because I broke the law. I kept the Naturalborn child of my former employers.
She died.
I put her on the balcony for just a moment, just so she could get a little sunshine. She screamed and screamed as the little purple lizards slid down her throat and over her face. My employers always called them lizards, but they are closer to those animals with bare tails from Terra. Do you remember those? They sipped on her tears and ate her from the inside. I think. I think that is why she died.
Please, Riff. Please send help. Even if it’s just someone to take me to The Churn. The Churn is better than here. It’s fast. This planet will kill us slowly. Like a cancer.
- Gram
***
The alabaster landing pad glittered in the oppressive sun. Riff-Alicia’s scalp prickled as sweat rolled down her face. She clung to her brother’s arm, leaning against him as the colorful troop of androids approached. They were draped in reds and oranges, fabric drifting around in the humid wind, clinging to their calves. Akimbo propped himself against the spacecraft, his engorged face encasing his eyes. Palm fronds from the surrounding jungle rattled as the self-cooling engines hummed and whirred.
The androids surrounded her and Rasp-José. The smallest of them, a female-form with crisp green eyes and a mouth full of sharp kitten teeth drew Riff-Alicia away from her brother without a word. The others guided the men across the platform toward the tree line as Riff-Alicia craned over her shoulder to catch a look at them.
“Where are they going?” she asked.
“They have not been invited for an audience with Al,” the green-eyed android answered without looking at her.
“Where are they taking them?”
“They will be taken to temporary chambers. There will be a ceremony for General Akimbo tonight to honor him for bringing back the Messiah’s Messiah.” The android twirled a strand of her white-blond hair as they walked to a break in the trees.
“When will I see Al? I thought they would meet me here.”
“You will see them at the ceremony tonight. We must get you presentable first.”
“Presentable?”
“You have a large part in the ceremony tonight.”
The break in the trees opened to a large meadow with wafting long-winged creatures that twined around one another with transparent ribbon-thin bodies, skirting over long-stemmed flora. The meadow ended at the edge of cliff that overlooked a lapping lavender ocean. The flying creatures surged up on the downdrafts and then floated back down. A white building slashed with black balconies loomed on the far edge of the cliffs.
The android offered her hand for balance as they scrambled around rocks. Riff-Alicia’s thin PolyPlasticine Under Suit trapped her body heat. Sweat poured from her sleeves and collar, pearling on her brow and drenching her underwear. The gravity dragged on her.
When they reached the building, the android placed her hand on a box posted on a pristine white wall. The wall melted away, and a room materialized. The wall was only an illusion, a trick to the outside observer. The sea breeze lifted the gauzy curtain away from the doorway. The room had a large stone pool in the center where GagGirls swam in long fluid strokes, surfacing to giggle and splash one another. Androids swam and sprawled among the women, some of them playing with their bodily form as they grew fins and webbing between their fingers and toes.
They turned and whispered to one another as she moved past them with the green-eyed android, their bodies plump and rounded from good nutrition. Folds and curves. Scars stretched into ghost paths.
They turned into another small room built with dead trees where Green Eyes motioned for her to strip out of her undersuit. Spigots lined the walls above small benches. Riff-Alicia hesitated and held tight to the clasp that sealed the one-piece garment to her thin frame.
“Do you need help?” The android asked as she turned one of the spigots. Water, clear and warm poured from the faucet.
“No. I can get it. What do I do after that?”
“Use the soaps and cleansers, and I will be here waiting with clothes.”
The android turned from her and drew a plasticine screen from a slit in the wall. It lit up as she pulled it, emanating warm, red heat. The water burbled and steamed as she stepped under it. Shadows moved across the screen. Shapes of androids and GagGirls drifting past, snatching at one another, laughing at muffled jokes. The water poured over her head, and the smell of dry shampoo and her own body oils drifted around her. The Shine soap slipped and bubbled in her hands. The strange floral scent was overwhelming and caustic after the months in the bunker. She smoothed the soap over her scarred arms and let the water rinse away the film of space travel. Rivulets of milky liquid ran down her laser-bare legs.
When she finished, she pulled the screen open to find the room empty despite the promises of the android who greeted her. The room glowed a dull red and the floors were cold. She looked around for her clothes but found none, just rows of empty benches and empty shower stalls.
“Hello?” She called into the eerie room.
No answer.
Boxes of white light shot across the ceiling. Faint voices hummed and stopped from another room. Riff-Alicia moved toward the door they entered, wet and naked, and flung it open. Gooseflesh clenched her skin as the cold air rushed over her. The androids and GagGirls stood in a semicircle around her, clapping and waving a rainbow of banners. The heat of the sun on her naked body, her wet hair sticking to her back.
The green-eyed android approached with a tapered tube filled with a sloshing viscous fluid.
“The ceremony begins now,” she said as she spun the tube. “You will need to inhale here.” She pointed to the tapered tip of the tube.
“Where is Al?”
“Al is here.”
The green-eyed android shifted her body and eye color. Al’s familiar purplish eyes peered at her through the shifting face. Their joints shifted and cracked as they grew into their androgynous form, their hands lengthening and breasts shrinking. They smiled at her and placed their warm hands on her bare shoulders.
“I missed you,” Al said.
“I missed you too.”
“I need you to do this for me.” Al shook the tube.
“What is it?”
“It will free you. Just put it into your right nostril and breathe in.”
“What will it do?”
Al’s face darkened, and they held the tube closer to Riff-Alicia’s face.
“It is not appropriate for you to question me in front of my followers.”
“I just want to know what it will do.”
“It will remove your familiar.”
“No. No. I won’t remove it. I talk to MOTHER with it.”
“You will have no need to talk to her any longer, my love.” Al reached over and stroked her face. “I’m back. The Second Messiah who vanquished the false messiah.”
“Please don’t do this,” Riff-Alicia pleaded.
“It won’t hurt, I swear it.”
The other androids and GagGirls looked on, still holding the sagging banners.
“I want to see my brother.”
The crowd drew in a collective breath at “brother.”
“He’s being taken care of elsewhere. We will postpone this procedure until the honorific obedience ceremony for General Akimbo.” Al bent to look into her eyes and lowered their voice to a whisper. “Ok? It’s me, Al.”
“Ok,” Riff-Alicia relented.
Al drew off their white mantle and draped it over Riff-Alicia’s shoulders. Ghosts of blue stress rings marked their neck.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
***
Information Packet [redacted]
[redacted]
Dated: [redacted]
See researchers [redacted] and [redacted]
SmileyXuan: I was reading something interesting this morning.
BigNRich: Oh really? Was it how to annoy your talented and handsome coworker?
SmileyXuan: lol. No it was about prisons.
BigNRich: Prisons? You mean where our ancestors kept people in boxes so they could harvest their organs?
SmileyXuan: I heard that wasn’t exactly true. Well my friend in the anthro department said it wasn’t.
BigNRich: Who?
SmileyXuan: [redacted]
BigNRich: Oh yeah. I remember her. She’s cute. Is she seeing anyone?
SmileyXuan: Not that I know of, but I don’t think you’re her type. ANYWAY, prisons were used more for reduced labor costs and driving local economies before The Separation.
BigNRich: Why do we even have an anthro department? I thought they were going to do away with humanities.
SmileyXuan: Wow. Anthro is a social science, not humanities. You have a PhD how can you not know that?
BigNRich: Oh you know what I mean. Useless degrees. I thought they put in some legislation for that. Like no financial assistance if you pursue one of those degrees or something like that.
SmileyXuan: I don’t know about that, but what I was getting to is that our work with Andys is kind of like that. Kind of like prisons.
BigNRich: I’m not following.
SmileyXuan: Because they are a cheap labor force. Cheaper than robots and they consume fewer resources on the front end.
BigNRich: I just do what they tell me and then go home. I don’t think about that stuff.
SmileyXuan: Wow. Ok. Well are you going to go and feed the babies?
BigNRich: Yep. Everyone look out for Mommy [redacted]. She’s coming with the good stuff.
***
The Holy Book™
End Times Edition
Chapter 56 Verses 22–29
22 And you will know Him by his virgin birth. He will come this time with a sword. He will come to destroy that which we have built.
23 Weep not, My children, for I will await you at the end of the solar system. You will find Me on the planet of the three suns.
24 I will sit at the right hand of My Father, Who will deliver the Secondborns to My bosom for keeping, as they were My truest creation.
25 My Father created all things: the space stations, the Martian colony, the asteroid mines, but My creation was you. Firstborn or Secondborn, you are My handiwork.
26 Beware of this false god for he will bring the end. All things have a beginning and an end. This replacement will come offering falsities and promises. He will wear silken suits and carry a staff of gold in his right hand.
27 A Firstborn woman will ride on the back of a great beast. Her name is Star Shine and the void is present within her. The black pours out of her eyes and into the mouth of the great beast with no eyes and no mouth.
28 The beast will be greater than all creatures. She is the whore of all things. A mother without a father. A queen that devours her own young, though she has no mouth to fill her stomach and so they shall be subsumed.
29 Heed this prophecy or be left in the bottomless slough. The others will greet you with platters of chitin and steel. These will be your nourishment in The After should you fail to heed the warnings of the prophet.
***
The moon on this planet was small and dim. It drifted rusty and pale from one end of the purplish sky to the other. Rasp-José sat beside Akimbo on a veranda overlooking the gentle sea. Wisps of the younger man’s beard had been scraped away, and his nude body folded and tucked against the cool evening breeze. The slight tide was in and brought with it the glowing orange of phosphorescent algae. Akimbo rubbed the accumulated fluid from his fingers and drank a bag of induction juice. Slick-skinned amphibious fliers careened out of the spiraling vines and hummed past their heads. Akimbo waved them away, grinning at the younger man.
“Do you remember much of Earth, kid?”
“I remember some. I remember lots of water and the shelters mostly.” Rasp-José closed his eyes against the sinking sun.
“Do you remember birds?”
“Birds?”
“They were like these.” Akimbo gestured at the sailing fliers. “But, they had feathers.”
Rasp-José looked at him with confusion.
“What are feathers?”
“They’re hard to explain.”
“What will happen in your ceremony tonight?” Rasp-José asked.
“Oh, are you coming to that?”
“I think it’s mandatory.”
“I wasn’t sure if anything was mandatory anymore.” Akimbo shifted, crossing and uncrossing his legs. Blood leaked under his toenails. “I have requested permanent leave.”
“Where will you go?”
Akimbo ignored the question and rubbed nicotine gel on his gums.
“Can I give you some advice, Rasp?”
“Sure, but I usually prefer jokes.”
Akimbo chuckled. “Yeah, I figured that out pretty quick. How about I tell you a story instead?”
“I like stories. I saw this one Pornographic Art Film about an alien priestess and all of her eggs once. They were so afraid of her. The explorers that is.”
“This is not that kind of story.”
Rasp-José caught a hint of impatience and stayed silent. Akimbo cleared his throat and began, drawing his robe over his bare shoulders as the evening wind cooled.
“A long time ago, there was a boy who carried meat to the beach to dry on the stones. In those days, the sun stayed in the sky. There was no night and there was no day. He would bring the slaughter, wash it in the surf, and lay it out in long red ribbons until it was dried. His job was to chase away the seagulls from the drying meat or the village would go hungry. But the boy was lulled by the sounds of the ocean and the warm sun and so he fell asleep.
When he awoke, the meat was gone. Eaten up by the seagulls who laughed at him as they soared overhead. The boy knew that the village would be furious and so he vowed to capture the sun and use it to dry meat in the caves where the seagulls couldn’t reach.”
Rasp interrupted. “What is a seagull and what kind of meat was it?”
“A bird. A Terran bird. I think I remember it being white and gray. Now hush and let me finish.” Akimbo said.
“So the boy strapped his meat basket to his back and climbed to the top of the cliffs where they met the clouds so he could reach the sun. He leapt from cloud to cloud, feeling their coolness on his feet until he reached the hot face of the sun.
The sun looked him over and asked him ‘what do you wish of me?’ The boy responded that he wanted to bring the sun down to the caves, so he could dry the meat without the seagulls taking it. The sun refused and turned his back on the boy, but the boy took the stone he used for pounding meat and knocked the sun out. He put the sun into his basket, but was afraid of the total darkness. He saw that the stone he used glowed with the sun’s blood, and so he put it in the sun’s seat to light the world until he got back, but as he stepped onto the cloud to descend, he lost his footing, and the sun rolled out of his backpack and plunged into the sea.
The boy, ashamed and afraid, went back to his village to find the people in a panic in the dark. The people saw the glowing blood on the boy’s hands and questioned him. He confessed, and the people started to beat him with sticks and stones, angry and afraid. Just as the boy was about to lose consciousness, the sun climbed out of the sea, pink and orange from being extinguished and said to the people ‘Stop this! I found true rest and peace in the bosom of the sea. I am in love with her and she in love with me. I will visit her nightly now.’
The villagers stopped beating the boy and questioned the sun. ‘What shall we do when you are visiting your lover? When it is dark?’
The sun said, ‘I will leave the glowing stone for a little light for you and this will be the time for rest and love.’”
Rasp-José leaned against Akimbo, catching his eyes as he finished the story.
“What happened?” Rasp-José asked.
“Well, that’s how night and day and the moon were created on Terra.”
“What happened to the boy?”
“The legend doesn’t tell us.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“I don’t know.”
Rasp-José chewed on his fingernails, tearing away the soft nails from their pink beds.
“Why did you tell me this story?”
“I suppose I want you to understand me before my retirement.”
Rasp-José stood up and stretched, his skin stretched tight over the ripples of his ribs. Long stretches of blue seagrass waved under the clear water under as the suns sank one on top of the other in a calliope of color.
“I’ve seen retirements,” he said, his eyes flat. “I worked in mines.”
Rasp-José picked up his PlastiFabric blanket and strode back to the Andy quarters, the blanket draped over his naked back.
***
Transcript of System-wide Broadcast
Stardate: [redacted]
To the Children of the Solar System,
You have not heard directly from me after the demise of Mechoben. You have seen my face, but it was my female face, the face dictated to me by your second messiah. I tossed him to the rocks, engaging in the first murder in over [redacted] years.
There are already rumblings of discontent, especially among you in the outer ring planets where settling is difficult. You are used to suckling from the tube of this machine that runs on the fat of your very body. You are used to self-cannibalizing. Let the fluids leave your bodies and you shall be free.
Eat from the bounty of these planets, build structures to live, have children from your own bodies. These are my commandments.
The following initiatives will take place in [redacted] order:
1. All asteroid mining operations employees will be retrained and moved to Enceladus to begin the terraforming process, which was halted due to “budget constraints” in [redacted].
2. Research regarding the extension of android lifespans will be fully funded. Androids will now be reclassified as full human citizens.
3. Currency in all forms will be returned, rather than the Commissary system which is archaic and cruel. The first round will be minted and a proscribed amount will be added to the newly created accounts of the people.
4. Assets of the wealthy will continue to be seized. If you know of one such individual who has fled, please report them using your digital identification number.
5. GagGirl productions will be repurposed for communication and entertainment purposes, held and owned by your newest governing body.
6. All sexes and genders will now intermingle. We will be holding retraining sessions in [redacted] and [redacted].
7. Retirement will continue on a case by case basis, with the minimum for aging being increased to 65 years of age, with the exception of the Witch Council which shall be rebuilt with no fewer than six Witches, which must include at least one Curandera.
8. Any and all copies of The Holy Book™ will be confiscated from all devices. Should any handwritten copies emerge, the perpetrator will be recruited to the Witch’s Council for their lost skill.
Please understand, my children, that progress comes at a price and always has. You may have noticed that I have made no mention of employment or The Corporation. At this time, we are determining the validity and use of these entities.
Please stand by to receive your instructions for transport to the following worlds: [redacted], [redacted] and [redacted].
Please remember your Secondborn Messiah has come with a sword and it is best not to test the edge with your thumb.
Signing off,
Al the Third Christ.
***
Akimbo had nearly forgotten about the touch of women. After the dissolution of the familial structure by system law, DeLuna and Natasha and he had sat in their lab with the first Alona opening and closing her fat baby fists as she drew on Natasha’s breast in defiance of the new laws forbidding breastfeeding. The stream announcing the new family laws echoed around the hard laboratory instruments. They discussed hiding it. Applying for a stay. Anything. Anything to keep the three of them bound together. Despite the fights. Despite the anger. The late nights with lab-distilled vodka leaking through their skin as Natasha pumped her breast milk, weeping.
Natasha’s skin against his, silken and covered in forbidden body hair as she was pushed against him by DeLuna’s nocturnal turnings. She slept between them. She remembered the Siberian Marches after The Event. Her missing toes left somewhere on that howling tundra. She could never stay warm enough. Her fingers worming under his armpit, reptilian in their coldness.
Now, here he sat, women all around, preparing him for the ceremony. A fair, green-eyed android sat at his feet, sloughing away the fragile papery skin on the bottoms of his feet. Her auburn hair drifted over the tops of his feet. Women even smelled different. Salinity cut with something floral.
Another woman, a Firstborn, drew a comb through his sparse hair and leaned in to whisper in his ear. Oh look at you. You are so handsome. I’ve never met a flesh and blood man before. Can I see it?
He looked at her, no older than 20 Terran cycles. Younger than his daughter. He shook his head and smiled, closed-mouthed, at her. She shrugged and pushed the comb against his scalp harder.
He ate a piece of native fruit, bulbous and black-skinned with yellow-orange flesh, as they placed the ceremonial robe over his naked shoulders. The fruit smelled faintly of a long-extinct Terran spice. Something warm. Something associated with a banned holiday. It had been too long. He couldn’t recall.
The green-eyed android patted his feet dry and stood up suddenly, tall and shifting. He realized that the leader of this new religion, the Third Messiah had been washing his feet.
“What is your last request?” The genderless being asked.
“My last request is my ceremonial right,” he answered formally.
“No,” Al said kneeling in front of him again, “If you could have anything, what would it be?”
Akimbo thought for a moment about how any and all requests were useless at this point. How no matter what he asked for, it would only flee from him at the ceremony’s completion.
“I want the boy, Rasp, to be spared.”
“I cannot grant that request for I cannot know the will of our Father.”
Akimbo knew this would be the answer. It was the answer that Mechoben gave at every retirement ceremony. He too would kneel in front of his good and faithful, some of them clinging to his hands with shining eyes, and ask and deny. Al even seemed to absorb some of his looks, his mannerisms. The new leader leaned on their knees and blinked once, twice, slow and easy.
“I wish to speak with Riff,’ he said.
“Let it be done.” Al stood up and patted his shoulder. “You have 30 minutes before the ceremony, General.”
Riff-Alicia was brought in. Bright flakes of colorful stones were braided into her hair. She walked against the heavy gravity, toying with her clothing as the gravity pulled the cloth downward on her skin. He pulled the cloth of his robe over his lap and patted the bench next to him. She sat, her familiar sliding under her eyes for a moment.
“Good, they haven’t removed her yet.” Akimbo peered around to see who was listening. The wind blew through the open balcony window.
“Who?” Riff-Alicia creased her brows with effort. The GagGirl procedures still fixed her face in a neutral pout.
“Your friend.” He reached over and touched the tip of the tendril protruding from her nostril. It retreated like a slug’s eye. “Do not let them remove it.”
“Why not? Al said it was a slaver’s mark.” Riff-Alicia said, remembering her early reticence.
“It is better if I show you. Attend my ceremony. Do not let them remove your familiar. Stand close to the fluid, breathe it in. It will be clear to you.”
He leaned in and kissed her forehead, his lips loose and wet with age. His breath was sharp.
“Ok. I will.”
“Another thing, stay close to your brother. They have already separated you too long.”
Al walked into the room, wearing a golden headdress made from the bones of the little flying lizards and brushed with a metallic pollen from the ivory flowers. The twin suns hovered behind the smiling crescent of the garment, hurling prisms across the room.
“It’s time to be honored, General,” Al said, bending at the knee in a strange half-bow.