The chamber was filled with people, androids and humans, and even an Amourkalian hunched at the edge of the fray, dripping the neon juice of masticated LinLin leaf into the mouth of a thickly muscled human, who swept his hands over the Amourkalian’s folds of bright pink flesh.
The ceremonial pool swirled into a chasm, wider than the mansion itself. Riff-Alicia saw her brother seated against the wall. She waved to him, calling his name against the din of rushing water and shouting, laughing, fawning followers. The followers of Al.
A tiny android woman pressed against him, her little hand cupped around his ear. He grinned and turned to her, not hearing his sister calling him, and touched the little android’s cheek with his knuckle. Riff-Alicia trudged up the stairs and slid down beside her brother, who only cut his eyes to greet her as the android kissed behind his ear.
The chamber slid into black opacity as Al strode out onto a huge circular platform in the center of the chasm to chants and cheers. The golden headdress glowed as the native insects ticked around it, drawn to the phosphorescence. The genderless android glowed in flat planes and angles as they held their hand up for silence. Voices puttered to whispers. Al smiled at the crowd, steadying themselves on a sloshing transparent tube filled with fluid.
As the voices quieted, a screen folded down in front of the audience. Pictures of Akimbo trawled across the display. One of him with his arm wrapped around another man, nuzzling into his neck. Rasp-José sat up.
“That’s Pai.” He whispered to Riff-Alicia.
She nodded and motioned toward the stage. Al was lifting the staff and bringing it down in a pattern. One. Two. One. Two. One. Two. Three. One. Two. The fluid in the tube glowed and expanded. Something dark slipped around and around in the liquid, spinning it into a whirlpool. Riff-Alicia wondered if she was close enough to breathe in the fluid like Akimbo had instructed.
Akimbo walked out cloaked in pure white, carrying an empty hollow tube identical to Al’s. His curved back seemed to follow as a separate entity. The thumb-sized drone cameras still in use at the compound hummed around his face, projecting the tired creases around his eyes onto the screens surrounding the crowd.
Al uncapped the transparent tube and held it parallel to the platform as Akimbo approached. A fluid flowed in a thin slow stream from the end of the tube, pooling into a dark undulating puddle. The aged man placed the end of his own tube into the contracting pool of liquid. The crowd vibrated, clutching one another. A collective uptake of breath. The little android at Rasp-José’s side slid her fingers between his.
Akimbo put his mouth and nose into the end of the tube and closed his eyes. Al placed their hand on the top of his head and leaned down to whisper in his ear. The drones hummed around them, amplifying the sounds of sticking saliva and husky affirmation of duty.
Al stepped back away from the general and nodded at him. He inhaled sharply, and the puddle evaporated into a dense gas cloud that tumbled up the transparent tube toward his face. He pulled away from the tube, straight and tall, tears and mucus sliding down the furrows of his space-worn cheeks. An oily calliope of color streaked down his crepe paper skin.
He choked and stumbled into Al’s open arms. The platform rose and drifted toward the crowd. Al slipped their hands under Akimbo’s slack jaw and nodded at the camera on the drone. Their eyes, huge and still as mirrors, flashed across the screen with a wriggling worm emoji Riff-Alicia recognized from the factory. The crowd erupted into frantic chanting. Androids and Firstborns tore at their robes and flung a fine gray powder into the air. The little android by Rasp-José’s side pulled a molar from her mouth and hurled it toward the floating platform. Another snipped a triangle of skin from their ear lobe with wiring scissors, offering it as the bizarre flotilla passed. Some tore their fingernails from the root. Some reached under their robes to retrieve clots of menstrual blood. One Firstborn held the tip of his forefinger in his palm.
Flesh flesh flesh. They droned all at once. God demands flesh. Flesh flesh flesh.
The offerings pattered around the white-draped android God and the slumped pietá figure of Akimbo. The iron meat smell of blood permeated the chamber.
Al raised a blood-spackled hand. The crowd writhed under their own importance, their own participation with a flesh-bound God. They did not hear their God in the din of this collective largeness. Al slid one arm under Akimbo’s unconscious body and snatched a drone from the air with the other hand, drawing the embedded microphone close to their lips.
“Is your sacrifice enough, my children?”
“Never!” The crowd shouted back.
“Is General Katsumi Akimbo’s sacrifice enough?”
“Never!”
Rasp-José edged closer to his sister, pushing past the little android who stood with blood streaming down her jaw. He grabbed Riff-Alicia’s arm and shouted into her ear.
“What’s happening?”
She shrugged at him.
“I’m scared. I think we should go,” he said, straining his voice against the noise.
“We can’t.” She nodded up toward the shining eyes of the drones circling the room.
Her calm voice disturbed him. A flare of anger rose in his chest. He squeezed her arm harder. She yanked her arm away from his grasp and bared her teeth at him.
“There is nothing we can do, José,” she hissed. “Nothing. Do you understand?”
Al’s voice boomed through the speakers.
“Is my sacrifice enough?”
The crowd all jumped to their feet in unison, clapping and screaming.
Al bundled Akimbo’s limp body into their arms and lifted it toward their mouth. The drones hovered by the slick opening as Al stretched the skin around their lips to transparent elasticity. Their mouth closed over the general’s slack lips, sealing them in a suffocating kiss. The translucent skin filled with thick red blood as Akimbo thrashed in Al’s muscular arms.
The crowd roared. Androids cycled through color changes. Blue spots, red loins, eyes as yellow as Sol, all as transient as the moon rise. The colors shuddered and faded like soap bubbles under the light. The Firstborns tore at their faces, laving blood from the floor onto the crowns of their heads.
Al spat a spray of blood onto a group of squealing female androids, their skin ringed with blue and orange.
The Third Messiah dropped the gasping Akimbo to the edge of the platform and wiped the blood from their mouth. Sweat pearled on their pale brow. The crowd tore at one another, pushing into one another. A female Firstborn lay under a heaving android with vestigial webbing between his spread fingers.
“What is the will of the people?” Al’s voice rasped around the chamber above the din.
The crowd calmed some and turned toward the screens again.
“I ask you again. What is the will of the people?”
“Our will is your will,” they responded in unison.
“Let it be done,” Al responded, breathing into the drone microphone.
Akimbo struggled onto his elbows, his mouth a wet void. His teeth shone red against his lipless face. He rose to his knees and wrapped his arms around Al’s knees, smearing pinkish fluid on their glowing skin.
“Let it be done,” the crowd responded.
Al retrieved Akimbo from the floor and tucked him against their chest like a child. They smoothed his thinning hair back from his forehead. The general wept as the leader of Sol, the Son/Daughter of the galactic turning, lowered him into The Churn. The crowd leaned into one another mimicking the cries of the general as his body floated, flailing against the concrete walls.
Rasp-José wept with the rest of them as Riff-Alicia watched. As a drone buzzed by, she yanked up her torn tunic to shield her face. It was the first time she had ever thought to hide her face from cameras. They were ingrained in her, a cultural shift implemented by her mother’s choices, by her grandmother’s choices, by her greatgrandmother’s choices. Choices made in response to smooth-faced politicians who promised them clean water, abundant food. Sacrificial totems led to the fire. To die with honor. Akimbo looked as dead as the android on Enceladus. As dead as Mama. As dead as the Curanderas. Dying with honor was the same as dying without honor. Dead ears can’t hear trumpets.
This was no different. Riff-Alicia had a choice. She grabbed her brother’s arm and pulled him toward the outer doors. The sound of the crowd faded as they exited the chamber. Rasp-José wiped his eyes and tried to kiss her on the mouth. She pulled back.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know. Do you want to hear a joke?”
She creased her brow and frowned at him.
“No. No I do not. I want to leave.”
“And go where?”
“Back to Terra.”
“Earth isn’t livable, sister.” He looked at her as the crowd chanted something indecipherable from behind the doors.
“Then I want to destroy it.”
“Destroy what?”
“I want it all gone,” she clenched her jaw.
“Like what though?” Rasp-José seemed to be returning to himself.
“The mines. The GagGirl facilities. This. All of this place. None of this is different. It’s all the same as before.”
“But where will we go?” Rasp-José scrubbed at his closed eyes with the heels of his hands. “And how could we destroy it?”
“MOTHER. MOTHER will help us,” she said.
Her messaging application flashed at her wrist.
“What’s that?” Rasp-José peered at the tiny hologram. “Who’s Gram?”
“A friend from the factory. I loved her.”
“As much as me?” He grinned.
She ignored him and opened the message. His jokes, always out of place, frustrated her.
“She’s asking for help.”
“What kind of help?”
“She says they are hungry.”
“Like The Before?”
“Yeah, like that.”
“Can we bring her food?”
“We can bring her something better. We can bring all of us something better. The Curanderas showed me how, and now I am a Curandera.” She clasped his hands in hers, her eyes bright and steady.
Rasp-José nodded, his expression blank.
“Do you want to hear a joke now?”
Riff-Alicia smiled, her throat tight.
“Sure. Tell me a joke.”
Sighs and chants radiated from the chamber. Rasp-José took a breath.
“A man walks into a GagGirl shoot and sees a very beautiful android. He asks the director, ‘Does your GagGirl bite?’ ‘No, she doesn’t bite.’ The man tries to kiss the android, but the android attacks him viciously and tears off his lip. A little later he stumbles to the director, ‘Hey, you said your android doesn’t bite!’ The director shrugs, ‘She doesn’t. But that wasn’t my Pornographic Film Actress.’”
Riff-Alicia smiled and motioned for him to follow her to her chambers, the gases from the stadium filling her lungs.
***
Gram heard the chirp of an incoming message as she shoveled the whiteish silt over the bodies of the two Firstborns who died after eating BlackBlacks. Now she knew why the ancestors buried their dead. Too many fliers. Too many parts scattered over the beach. Their mouths still stained with the dark juice formed perfect O’s, as if they were surprised despite her warnings. She laid down her shovel and switched off the Solar Digger Scoopomatic.
She pinched the plasticine Bubble Messaging Watch and pulled it up to open the message. Riff’s face, scarred and spare, popped up on the screen.
An android named Lo sat cross-legged at the large outdoor dining table across the yard mending the Nylex seat covers left by colonization team. She ripped the seams and looked over at the fizzing pop-up message. Gram hopped down into the hole she had been digging and pushed her finger into the flexible plasma to play the message. She did not trust the androids. Most of them were specialty skill Andys and didn’t talk much.
The message fizzed and cut in and out, but a scroll of text followed:
Gram,
I received your message. I am happy :) that you are alive. Isn’t it strange that we weren’t allowed to use words like “dead” or “alive?” before the Second Coming? Praise Al. Praise Them.
Don’t you believe it is important to salute our new leader?
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
I believe that I have a solution for your problems, but it will require that you remember our training at the Factory. Do you remember the number system for plasticine welding? Boy I sure do. A = 21, B = 42, C=84. It was kind of hard wasn’t it?
I will send you a diagram of native plant research and you can use this same numbering system to organize your own individual growth plan. Isn’t that neat? On the diagram, you will find numbers that match. That’s on purpose.
Once you complete the numbering system you will find that the plants will talk to you. Numbers are hidden in everything, you know.
I will join you at your colonization site in a quarter cycle. Please make sure the plants are numbered.
Love,
Riff
P.S. I found out my Before name. It’s Alicia. You can call me that if you want.
Gram puzzled over the message. There had been no numbering system at the factory. She opened the attachment of the plant diagrams to find pages and pages of old Terra crop diagrams, each carefully numbered. She dragged the pages side by side and read the message again. She sat down at the bottom of the grave and wrote the numbers in the sand.
The pattern revealed itself as she puzzled over it. She scrawled in the dirt.
We are coming in four cycles. Al will not change things. Suffering is ongoing. We need you. Do not transmit back. Channels are still open. Not protected. MOTHER is the key.
Gram wiped her hand over her child’s scrawl and dragged away the message. She pushed herself out of the hole to find Lo standing a few meters away, staring at her with eyes as still as pools.
“What is it, Lo?” Gram feigned normalcy.
Lo blinked, a slow smile spreading on her phocine face as she whispered something.
“I can’t hear you.”
The android cleared her throat and said, “I saw it.”
“What?”
“The message.”
“So what?” Gram felt tension rolling up her throat.
“Your friend doesn’t believe in the Third Messiah.”
Gram knelt down to pick up the shovel.
“What do you want?”
“I want to know why.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Why would your species create something they don’t trust?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to kill me?” Lo asked.
“Are you going to stop us?”
“No.”
“Then no. But I can. I’m not afraid.”
“I’m not afraid either.” Gram paused. “Do you believe in the Third Messiah?”
“I know I’m going to die because I was designed to. I don’t want to die. The Messiah said that I would be able to live.”
“Grux and Hilla didn’t live.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“So, I guess I want to live. And I will. No matter what.”
“I won’t stop you. I want to live too.”
Lo rushed to her and flung her thin arms around Gram, howling like an animal. The shovel fell from Gram’s hands.
The pressure of the android’s embrace tightened around her trunk, compressing her ribs and sobbing into her neck. Gram stroked her matted hair, smelling the salt and oil that laced the neglected curls. She wasn’t designed like the Pornographic Art Film Andys. She couldn’t change color. She was a domestic model. Designed for cleaning for the Worthies. She had steady gray eyes set into a flat face and firm hands.
Gram thought of the child that had been next to her in the escape pod after the bombings. They clung to one another as the craft rattled, snapping her teeth together. The child’s skin was hot, and a pinprick rash dusted her skin pink. They cried as the pressure sat on their ears and sinuses, binding them to their nausea. Gray and white whisped past their tiny porthole windows. A woman across the aisle from them stared, unblinking, her jaw tightening in a striated bulge. She clutched the body of a small dog with a stiff dry tongue that jutted forward in rigor mortis.
Then the portholes were slicked black as they jetted out of the warm belly of Earth into the cold vacuum. The officials stood up as the shuddering craft drifted into eerie stillness and brought out tablets to document the passengers. The blue swirling sphere of Earth hung suspended behind them. The orange and gray clouds and skin-tearing winds hidden under the white swirls.
A uniformed arm appeared above Gram, and a heavy adult hand rested on the brow of the little girl beside her. The little girl screamed and pinched Gram’s arms. The adult hand pulled open the top part of the child’s white nightgown and withdrew at the sight of the rash. Then there were two sets of hands and no more little girl beside her. Adult hands on her forehead. Adult hands examining her skin. Adult voices asking her if she had ever had her vaccinations. Vaccinations? Shots. Yes. Shots. She got a sticker of a banana. She didn’t even cry. Good girl. This is just to take your temperature. Where is my friend? Where is she?
Later, as she dozed against her window, she heard the hiss of a hatch being opened. A bundle drifted by with strands of weightless blond hair slipping from under the knotted mermaid blanket.
Lo released her and leaned backwards, sliding damp strands of hair from her face. The ocean lapped against the cliffs as the tide came in.
***
Taking the hover truck was the easy part. Gram was on the same planet. The needles sank into Rasp-José’s scalp as he activated the drive setting. The screen shimmered and a topless GagGirl somersaulted onto the screen, overlaying a map divided into several sections. His sister crossed her legs in the hard seat next to him and motioned toward the screen as the GagGirl bounced up and down, explaining the use of the human brain as a central operating system. His right hand clenched and tightened as the electrical impulses pulsed through his brain. The GagGirl on the screen clapped and squealed.
“Very good! We’ve got good biofeedback. Now let’s get your eyeline lined up. Follow the dots on the screen. Very good! Now, where would you like to go? Just look here at the map and say your destination out loud.”
Riff-Alicia jabbed her finger at the screen, pointing to a mansion built into the side of a cliff as Rasp-José said, “Friendly Forest Mansion” in his clearest voice.
“Good choice! You will arrive at your destination in approximately one half cycle. Please remember to attach the catheter and the alpha wave retransmitter. You ARE the computer, and we depend on you. You will not be able to exit the program until you reach the specified destination.”
Rasp-José nodded at the screen as the visual instructions for inserting the catheter popped up. Riff-Alicia looked away as he reached for his penis to insert the thin flexible tube.
***
Riff-Alicia was jolted awake by the high hum of the hover truck’s boosters switching off. The smell of burning plasticine. Blood in her mouth. The GagGirl’s high voice prattled on about personal responsibility and the demerits accrued by property damage. Pain shot through her jaw. She touched her face and looked over at her brother.
Rasp-José’s forehead pressed against the glass, his wrist bent backward. A thin shard of bone poking through the skin. Acrid vapor poured through the climate control slats, gagging her. She pried her body from the crumpled seat and slid over to her brother. Her heart monitor chirped. As she pulled the cap from his head, the tiny needles scraped fine lines along his skin. She lifted his limp wrist to look at his wrist monitor, but the cracked facing made it unreadable.
A strange squeal pipped through the surrounding forest. She held her breath as something scraped by the smoking vehicle and lifted it for a moment, dumping it back to the ground. Rasp-José’s head fell backwards, his mouth open and gurgling.
Riff-Alicia put her hand over his mouth as the dark shape hunched around the truck, tugging at the crushed panes with white-streaked fingerless palms. The smell of decay hung in the air. Her brother gagged under her fingers. A faint whistling in his chest. The being dragged around them, hissing and moaning. Rasp-José choked as pink foam oozed from his mouth.
The creature tore through the door, and Rasp-José crumpled away from her grasp onto the forest floor. It crouched over the young man, shuddering. Its slick body was covered in hundreds of limbs, each from a different native species. Little lizard legs formed a spiny line along the curve of the creature’s back. A single human arm swung from its belly, grazing the ground.
The night sky reeled above her through the ripped metal. The stars sterile pinpoints, arcing and spinning around one another. Messages from the eons extinguished and repeated and drowned in the spinning black.
She crawled from the vehicle, her heart pumping, and screamed at the being. A guttural manifestation of her rage. Her familiar, so still and so quiet for weeks, surged from her nostril, sliding into a long furl. Her mind filled with images of red feathers, and the surging scaled back. Her familiar took on the shape, slipping scales onto the arching back, growing fangs into long curves. She felt its roots in her chest, pulling at her belly and groin. MOTHER whispered behind her eyes, like someone speaking in another room.
The creature flattened its body over Rasp-José and clicked at her. Her familiar whipped back and forth, lifting her as it pressed against the ground. The trees lit up in a cacophony of rattling wings. The creature slid backward, dragging her brother with it and leaned backward into the humming trees. Heat poured off of the tree, igniting the forest in a glowing hum. The familiar lunged at the being, tearing at its patchwork limbs. A hunk of eye-specked flesh fell away, blinking in a bed of spiked leaves.
The being slid a membrane over Rasp-José’s body. His dark eyes opened, staring at Riff-Alicia as blood poured from his mouth. Urine leaked from under the caul, and the glowing insects on the trees lit on the puddle, droning in a pulsing singularity.
The familiar uprooted itself from her and slung itself onto the creature. It tore at the membrane as Riff-Alicia heaved and gagged, her sinuses and belly emptied of her familiar. The creature slid backward up into the trees, Rasp-José still dangling from the sticky membrane. His head bumped into the tree as it retreated. The familiar, disconnected from her, curled and uncurled, shrinking into a chewed pile of black offal. The membrane holding him snapped as the creature pulled away into the trees. His right arm was torn almost completely off. The tendons and muscles shone purple under the two moons.
She rushed to him, the acid from her retching burning her throat. His chest fluttered as she pulled at the membrane covering his face. His eyes drifted sideways, not recognizing her. Not remembering. Not seeing. She pressed her ear to his chest. With each pump, blood flushed from his torn arm and oozed from his mouth. Lighter and lighter like the flap of a bird’s wings as it ascends. The smell of death, putrid and coppery. She shook him once. A tiny familiar slid from his ear.
The vehicle smoked, crushed and useless behind her. She touched the pile that was once her familiar as it oozed and melted into the earth.
For the first time in her life, she was alone.
She stretched her mind for MOTHER, but heard only her own inner voice pleading for recognition.
Riff-Alicia stood up and brushed her hands together. Her brother’s mangled body curved into a comma on the ground. Little glowing lizards slipped over his body, lapping moisture from his wide-open eyes. The forest hummed and buzzed. A high choking cry ricocheted around the trees.
Heat flushed her face. She couldn’t stay here. The moons pierced the treetops, bright as sickles.
***
Lo found Riff-Alicia at the edge of the overgrown property, blood and dirt smudged over her face. Her black eyes were still and flat and she clutched something in her hands. The android rushed to her, peeling away her own jacket and draping it over her thin shoulders.
“I thought I was a Curandera,” Riff-Alicia whispered.
“A Curandera? Come inside now. We don’t have a lot of food, but I was just picking fruit. What happened? I thought you were bringing Rasp.”
“He was retired.”
Lo rubbed her upper arm as she guided her toward the house.
“Who retired him?”
“Un monstruo.”
That word. Sliding on her belly under the bed, carpet burning the skin of her elbows. The smell of cigarette smoke. José’s Spider-Man sneakers. El monstruo’s thick-nailed feet compressing the carpet. Crying. Holding her yellow stuffed sun with a smile embroidered in black thread.
Lo steadied her, smelling the metallic ozone in her hair. The warmth of her body and the smell of her skin. Gram hunched over some turned earth in the distance, her sharp profile dark against the morning suns. Riff-Alicia broke away from Lo, running, running backwards, shedding her growth. Wanting instead the moments before the GagGirl films, before MOTHER, before family. Wanting the safety of the lines of bunks, the girls spreading their Commissary purchases in neat little lines, comparing Emotion Cubes and Little Rosy Robot models. Cuddling together in a single bunk, giggling about the management until the supervisors came in with deactivation wands and turned off their toys and tablets.
Gram looked up to see her running towards her, startled. The two women collided, Riff-Alicia wrapped around her, her scarred body nearly alien to Gram. Her breasts, still filled and altered, pressed against Gram’s lean belly. Her scar-ticked skin like sea-smoothed pebbles under her fingers.
“Where is your brother? The hover truck?” Gram asked.
Riff-Alicia stared at her.
“It’s gone. All of it.”
“What?”
“Un monstruo retired him. The truck. I don’t know why, but it stopped in the forest. Al didn’t stop us. No one stopped us. We lived on a moon. We lived on ice.”
Gram listened carefully.
“But what about the supplies?”
“They are in the truck, but el monstruo is still there.”
Gram motioned to two identical androids. The PermaMascs, big bodied and docile, dropped their tools and lumbered over. Their pale blue eyes steady. Lo stood nearby, twisting her pale hair around her finger.
“We have to get the supplies,” Gram said to the androids, looking over Riff-Alicia’s head.
In that moment, Riff-Alicia looked at the small band of survivors and realized that nothing could be done. That even if they could eke out an existence on this shimmering planet, if their Terran seeds could find purchase in the strange soil, suffering would persist until it didn’t.
The planets would tear away from their gravitational tethers and drift away from one another until in another loop of chaos and violence they would collide together again in a lottery of proteins and electricity to create or destroy or drift further and further until The Black relented to the vacuum. Her atoms, her brother’s atoms, Mama’s atoms, Papa’s atoms, the atoms of their android shadows all reconstituted.
She breathed, feeling the air fill her lungs, and faced Gram.
“I will tell you where the supplies are if I can have a piece of her familiar.” She nodded at one of the settlers, pale and young, bearing the GagGirl markers on her arms.
“Why? It’s a slave marker.”
“I can’t tell you right now.”
Gram nodded and motioned to the girl. “We need those supplies,” She said, wrapping her cheap plasticine fiber shawl around her thin shoulders.
Riff-Alicia pulled the girl’s face close to hers and massaged under her eyes with her thumbs, feeling the little creature squirm under the skin. She reached back and slapped her face. Once. Twice. Tears rolled down her shrunken cheeks as Riff-Alicia struck her again and again until the warm slide of her stunned familiar touched her upper lip.
Riff-Alicia seemed to tower over her, her black hair shrouding her vision in a waft of oily opacity. Her bowed lips, dotted with micro scars pressed into the divot above her own lips. Her breath drawn from her lungs. Visions of the star field above her as her body rang and shattered like a dropped bowl. A memory of soft fat arms holding her, sliding a tube down her throat until she gagged and sucked in a recycled breath. Someone patting her back, her head snapping back and forth. Foamy vomit on the floor. Something cool against her neck.
The GagGirl slumped under Riff-Alicia’s kiss, her hands suspended, fingers spread wide. Her old wrist monitor hummed a low tone as a blush-cheeked smiley face bounced across the tiny screen squealing Something isn’t right! Please alert a Body Mechanic! Maintain your Artists! Buy FemCare Vitamins!
The familiar slid into Riff-Alicia’s mouth, trailing a thin line of clear saliva that caught in a shining loop in the breeze.
The young Curandera dropped the frail body and beckoned the Masc models to pick it up.
“She is rewarded,” Riff-Alicia said as they lifted the limp form. “No more suffering.”
Gram rushed over and snatched her wrist. The striated muscle pulsing in her jaw.
“What have you done?” She hissed.
“You’ll see,” Riff-Alicia answered with an odd laugh.
“At least tell us where the supplies are.” Her eyes brimmed. “Please.”
“They are with the hover truck that crashed in Quadrant 46. Los monstruos may have already taken them, but it won’t matter anyway.”
“What are you talking about?” Gram squeezed her wrist tighter.
Riff-Alicia looked up at the sky in rapture, the sky reflecting in her black eyes.
“Look,” she pointed to the settlers.
The GagGirls tore at their faces, their familiars slipping in and out of their nostrils and across the scleras of their eyeballs. Her own new familiar wormed across her sinuses, the tip of it brushing across the lower lid of her right eye.
She had reached MOTHER. MOTHER sent images of fractured blue ice then flashed into the bodies of all that she occupied, scattered throughout the galaxy. Riff-Alicia looked down at slender hands that were not her own, stitching something rough and stiff as her belly gnawed with hunger, strings of light wavering around the viewing ports in a space station she had never seen. She felt pangs of heat up and down her spine as a Reformer scientist injected something yellow and cloudy into a vein that was not her own. She saw a transparent plasticine ceiling above her as a human male thrust into her, holding her by the nape of her neck. She saw the ice rings of some blue and purple whisped planet, tiny meteorites ticking against the hull of a spacecraft no bigger than a coffin, the heart that belonged to someone else squeezing as the oxygen monitor wailed with each dropped percentage point.
Finally, she saw Al’s bedroom. She smelled Al’s scent. She looked down at Al’s muscular legs and the tray of small, shiny fruits nestled beside a slice of cured dog meat. She chewed with Al’s mouth. The sweet berries popped between her molars, molars so aligned and painless. A young human teenager sat at her feet sliding her soft pink hands up and down her calves. The smell of refined Shine oil scented with synthetic fragrance hung in the air around them.
Here it is MOTHER. Here is where we begin.
The teenage servant’s familiar flopped onto the silver tray and whipped around the Third Messiah’s neck, cartilage crunching as it tightened. Riff-Alicia’s vision deepened into a deep red miasma of pain. A dying star collapsing into a tight singularity, its pull irresistible. Hollow echoes of shouts, muted by a thick rasping, dissolved into a vision of an immense woman draped in the skins of thousands of scarlet serpents, their naked muscular bodies writhing as they struggled to sup from her oozing breasts.
The woman held a sword in one hand and an onyx bowl in the other. She turned her face, larger and brighter than a moon, toward her. Steady as a growing child. Her mouth open to reveal a bright blue glacial cave where two aliens hunched over a small fire, tearing gristle from a bone. A tall obelisk rose behind them radiating warm orange light. A tall being lurched toward them on loosely jointed iron legs, a slender black tendril slinging from a single facial orifice.
Satellites popped in soundless explosions against the white sky.
DO YOU WISH THIS?
I do.
Warmth enfolded Riff-Alicia as she opened her eyes. The GagGirl’s hand lay open beside her in a slight curl. The humans’ familiars all poured out into the center of the room. Gram’s right leg was torn from her body and was being dragged toward the squirming mass of familiars. The forest was on fire around her, the trees crested with a slow orange glow. She lay down beside Gram’s limbless torso and slid her arm around her middle. Pieces of satellite spiraled down in flashes of light, ships and space stations just ticks of light and ozone. Euthanized before the drift.