the tree and the dust chapter 10

Chapter 10

After the battle had blown by, and the ground stopped trembling, the velveteen robot stood over the incredibly old man and watched him, undie. . .the thin blade impaled in the chest the head flopped back over the shoulder, laying in the wickets, two hands folded over stomach, golden thick curdled blood drenched
I could leave you here now, and end this story let the world fall back to bugs and sticks give you up to your make believe everything~ this cyclical monotony could pass
As the robot chirped, it’s hands pulled the thin blade from out flesh, pulling slowly, with uncertainty, wiping the blade as withdrawn, the tip falls out with a impudent ejaculation, the robot holds the blade before its own glittering jewel eyes and sheaths it on it’s hip.

I’m going to walk away now Dosh

"Ah, but you can’t my friend, your feet are already my feet" and the robot looks down and is surprised to see it’s very own feet pulling themselves up like socks over incredibly old feet
The velveteen robot drops onto it’s knees onto the old mans knees and lays on top of him as a blanket, a sweater, a quilted lover, and slowly sinks into Dosh, to ride upon his flesh, as uniform, spacesuit, menaced lover

"Follow the girl," the incredibly old man named Dosh says, hidden within a grey wall of suit~ and another velveteen robot steps out of the reeds and runs to catch up with the group running across the ice, under black testicle skies
We can’t follow the girl, the robots speaks, we can’t follow the girl within the suit
"Why ?" The old man screams, struggling to his feet, "why can’t we follow the girl. Why ? "

Because twenty minutes ago. . .

The girl within the suit, watches the blood vomit and tears pearl up, bead and roll off of her black clad lap
All she’d ever wanted to do was be inside a suit, to be immortal, to fly between the blackness of nights pinpricked stars, to breath vacuum, to drink the flesh and eat the fluid, but most importantly all she’d ever been trained to do, was wear this suit and get back home. . .

A home encapsulated in ice, frozen solid to the magma, a system suspended in time, locked away, the sun enveloped, enshrouded, like a jewel so intricately formed and framed in filigree as to be caged, locked away behind a wall of blackness so silver, a dam of light perched infinity behind, plunging eight or twelve planets into a frozen exile, away from life, the blackness so complete, that the stars slice thin scratches across the frozen face like a whisper, vapors vast ease off, as the atmosphere slowly sinks to settle below the hill tops to roll across the ice flow flawed waves, pushed against brittle beaches sanded polish. . .

A home frozen to death and guarded, surrounded by micro worlds of weapon, a halo, hidden beneath the dust of stars. . .

"Which way to the ship," she asks, the robot to her right, then to her left, "we have to hurry, which way, which way ? "

And the suit rumbles an answer into her very own throat, "there is no ship, you saw our ship exploded, enfire, smoldering, you must ask questions, only if the answer is unknown to you, these creatures will grow dull and leave you. . ."

"How do we get off this world then, suit, this is not our home,"
"And I, girl, am no human~ and you, girl, know the only way off of this planet"

"My people ! Won’t let this suit on board, my people won’t believe I am who I say, I am with the dead, to my. . ."

"Family, I know, and you know the only way off the planet then, take their ship from them, we only need to get into orbit, you can give it back, "

"My family wont let us take it, or give it back, they’ll have to defend the ship, I could take off the suit, and board. . ."
"You can not take off a suit, that says, no."
And the baby squirms beneath the folds of uniform and roots. And the girl frowns and adjusts, watches a snowfleck
"Run with me then, robots, how fast can I run suit ? she bites her lips and sprints toward her people




A vast pastoral universe stretching out from eye holes forever in every direction an endless black sea, waveless, calm and serene, mindless, morose flat without form the color of nothing, the form of often~
Looking at it makes my face hurt and ages one about the eye, weakens the bone, dulls the teeth sticks pin holes in the flesh, burned traces of tears of acid
The vastness of black eel grasses, under foot~ you could walk forever, die and be reborn to walk forever and repeat~ forever and never ever arrive anywhere because it is all nothing full of nothing but black swirling matter invisible to living beings, punctuated by small flecks of startling white stars, nameless, lost forgotten, a drift above the heads of dreamers.

They made the ships fly away,
There are no fleets, nobody could ever afford a fleet~ to what end would a fleet serve, there is no one to fight, this is not the sea of old histories hysterical overpopulated city states and aggressive children of god, this is a grown up space, with nothing but vastness
There is no where to go, but to go, we live between the stars, off worlders, the drifting elite, within the sphere and forested home we ourselves have formed, woven from our technologies womb,
If there is a planet, it is either dead or lifeless, or full of already evolved monsters
Humanity is hunted, haunted and hated

We have become monsters
We have always been monsters


Somebody else beat us to the name human, took away our rights, captured our homeland, ran across the stars, and told us to die, we trespass, on the very ground we emerged from, so we changed, we simply became !

this girl within this suit

which carries the stink of old

ah, Dosh, how did you get so old ? she whispers, a hushed sigh of exhaust, a gaseous mix recycled back to her chewed upon lips, moving around the name

Dosh. . .

the tree and the dust chapter 7

The spacesuit stepped toward her with monstrous intensity as the battle fell into a few random explosions, a stray shout, a thunder crack a flash of light
The arms holes reached out to embrace her hands like soft cold vagina and pull her in, when she screamed like a fart, and the robots held her tighter


It practiced all the things it would say, soliloquy, staring into the views, listening to her voice, smelling her boiling air, in short quick whiffs~ as knives stabbed in nostrils~

What if the world was a haunted house, a monster movie, what if every planet was taken, owned, or enslaved by all the creatures of your worst case thoughts, dreams, nightmared hopes, what if you’re the last person alive in a haunted space ship crash landed on a desert island after the apocalypse on a dead world, you are the last person alive, in the whole universe and there’s a knock at the door*

What if god is a shrimp and you’re a whale~ do you eat ’em ?

Does she even know the history of her own people ?

How these smelly huge burning fleshed humans came exploding off of their green and red and purple puffy planets and settled here and there and everywhere trespassing, poaching, stealing, mating, raping and setting up colonies and then cities and empires and further and further out here to the stars and how we just shrugged and stepped out, aside, into the dark and waited and hide and watched, until they all died out, evolved, crept back home to their hole in the dirt, but mostly just screamed along in jihad against each other, until this, a small museum sampling, a few books, entertainments, drama, and wonder, most of us didn’t even see or hear about them until~ they were gone, into the curvature of extinction. . . No, don’t be sad all living things race out there collective lives to the cliffs edge, the glass wall, the noose~

They never found us out here~
And we never had the pleasure
They would have eaten your fathers with a touch of salt, some fruit juice
A wonderfully short story
don’t’ forget how we helped exterminate them
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The incredible old man walked along the rows of coffins, draped in thick green mats of moss, crusted granite stones carved in lichen blossomed circles, beneath the large black dead trees, each thick haunted trunk hiding a life time of deception, casting a pale grey purple drapery of color on the snow covered ground at his feet as he walks with the military precision of a threat, his left hand pulls a line of frost off the length of black rolled steel of a casket, set atop a plinth of plum tarnished silver
Bumped up and to the shipNorth, the roots of massive twin trunks mere inches from the headstone, weathered, smooth, inset with the holographic image of a women, with thick black curling fur, her eyes follow his movements~
you can~ let me out now~ Dosh her aching young voice pants, with saliva still so strong to his ears that he is stopped and turned, with commandment his legs drop and he kneels at the foot of the casket
“I can let out, now ~” he cries with pain laced punctures from memories and twisting of times
Hold me back, hold my mouth shut, drag me away from here ! He commands and the three or four robots hiding behind the death dewed trees lunge at him, grab his arms, twist his wrists and smother his face with soft gray hands and choke hold and chicken wing and submission fist assault him,
Drag him away from the pleading young women trapped in her casket
Dosh. . . Where are they taking you ~ a white tendon hand touches pale bruised lip and her eyes follow the violence till it’s lost in the screen of thicket, bramble and thatch
Dosh, your face . . .where have you been. . . For so long. . . Come back. . .let us out
Her voice trails off as her eyes see the eyes attached to faces of all the grave markers around her, tens, hundreds, thousands, faces of men and women and children lovers and haters
All trapped, entombed, and watching
You talk to him someone shouts, you make him let US OUT !
until they all fall silent, again, frozen in pictorial grace under the forests’ black canopy of branch, twig and shadow~ litter
He’ll never let us free. . . a voice like a falling acorn bounces off plinth and rolls to a silence buried in the salt haired snow.

*some famous s-f stories go like this

the tree and the dust

chapter 5

i spent my larval years tumbling and eating my way through the trash and extinction left behind by other races of man, or human, of being, as fleck of dust, as sparkling shard, a black snowflake~worming it's way to your heart
the Measeld Velligee Professtor

the blue, green, and white bubble that was the world sat on the tip of god's dick

which was the name of the ship* that was this world but i wouldn't know this fact for decades~ i thought i was alone on the world, of rubble and puddle and gravel and grave, among the monolithic tombs, tenements, and statue with faces blown off, worn away, tumbled into jumbled weedy beds and copse, me and the machines, the mother, the pony, the guardian and the monsters~ the snow, the ice, silver clouds and cold. . .

Alone in any human sense, is a tragic way to begin a love story~

but could you ever really begin a love story from within a prison, a jail cell, a zoo, under glass, so very Victorian

when i was born into this world. . .

what are you doing? the unbridled unicorn asks, flush yellow in the glare of starstab.

I'm telling you a story, how this all begins, so when I'm dead and killed and dismembered you can tell future archaeologist, what i was all about, what my existence will have been ~

i honestly don't think anyone will care, and i stare with a head tilted dumb, within the bacterium suit, ruffled up around my neck, the voice foggy with glittering ice

when your dead, history will have ended and thus nothing will know of you

but what of the Measled Velligee ?

He/it will look for more~ of your race

are there more, could we find them ?

and the unicorn, she called pony, shudders and lays at her feet, grab your weapons, Sarrow

this world created in mimicry of human habitation plagiarised from the ruins of diaspora, one small world, destroyed by violence and glacier

The creature hunted the barren world with paw and fang and sent it's tethered children out in front beyond it's own eye to fetch the flesh of child

little and mean like rabid feathered puff balls advance with rolling teeth, chattering,

eeeeeaaaat, they shrieked~leaping over the slice edged drifts, Pony run ! Sarrow attacks with fist crushing blows against thin skinned predator, who pop, exploding organ and tooth

she ducks, jumps rolls and kicks bites and spits, with survival vengeance, the pony leaps a tangled mass of white feather blood and cries, as Sarrow lands on his back and they run full speed on into the claw tentacle beak maw of the creature, in white, supernova, snowstorm,

hell of a planet you made, Proffestor

the creature stands up with prickled ear, and massive face and shoulders, a mouth full of hands and claws screaming, puking digestive fluids, and seamen, a horror of wide open sphincter, and the clearest blue eyes intent on prey, all stare at a thin lichen covered girl riding an improbably manufactured pony with a knife welded to it's forehead

while the creature just wanted to understand love, with it's waving frantic tentacle, olfactory, to taste the love of flesh and the flesh of loved

i love you the creature simple states why does it have to be like this ? don't you love me ?

and Sarrow atop the pony painted black with blood attacks into the very heart of this creature

cutting and hacking till she punches through to the other side and is kissed by snowlight and sweet air,

turning she looks behind to see a cave carved out of the very body of this thing slowly collapsing in spasm, death and delight

your leaving me ? i know it . . .

and Sarrow breaks a smile and laughs, as the monster lays on top of the unicorn, who squeaks, help !

*translated of coarse

the tree and the dust

chapter 4

the rain fell like glass and slashed our throats~

a whole world wilted at our feet

i drank a cup of blood in a room with diamond windows and waited for the world to come to an end~ in moon light artificial

the room was within a ship~ the ship was a world~ adrift submerged in the thick black void between stars, millions of years beyond the touch of light

we will float forever~

a crew of monsters ~

who could live forever

i could sit here watching the dust settle over hands holding the book, with it's black leather crust eyes scanning left to right, then right to left and up down, diagonal and gave up, a year had passed and the blood had gone cold, curdled, evaporated

when the window shattered and the glass shaped icicles stabbed thru the air at my face as i leap to my feet jump roll and fly cartwheel

as a monster dressed shabbily in gauche designer envirosuit pushes through the hole

so your home i tried to humor

and~ you are still alive~ the voice clicks across the air as whispered threats and the monsters face melts thru the ice of the helmets bubble

so very white the skin like blizzards against lightning

god, your hideous~ i breath in her form as the suit, shyly unfolded itself from the body, of this monster, in bipedal, twig like form, so thin and tall and pointy, unshielded, naked, pulsing, moist, bald, and furry, smooth like a fish and almost two dimensionally repulsive

this is the waste your life hunts for, this is your study, you love this form,while i mock it, and wear it's shame as costume to show you your disgrace~ and she brushes her hair back over shoulders improbably tall and flat, golden fur, with crinkly waves, and some morbid rotting fruit stink~civet

look at me,paraphilias Proffestor, put down your untranslated book and look at an actual human~

why do you prod me my friend, have your adventures fallen between the cracks of financial viability ? Human ~ that flesh you wear ~how dare you~ how disgraceful,

at my feet then planted with sisal root, i lean into the glassy shards, blood and dust fluid ground

crackle~

i found the humans, she slurs her words into unknowable yelps and squats to defecate,

alive ? what are they like~ where are they~ casual, place the great book upon the floor, hands, like corroded spiders to brush back a feaf, a fissure, standing again, bending with eye~

alive you speak of mystical creatures as alive~how ?

what ? now, you must tell me what they are ~ pleading almost feathered with excitement~

they are like this i brought you one of their young~ a baby

on fire

the tree and the dust

chapter 3

The terribly tarnished unicorn strained against the shackles, it’s forelock swinging back and forth before it’s brilliant blue eyes~ it's rider dead~
The chains bolted and welded to the hull of the flat black ship embossed with double lightning bolt insignia, jumping in and out of light speeds kiss
The magnetic hoofs clanked, scratched and slip
The stars wink, shift and change around the skies umbrella~ fall
And sink into the cold rolled steel surface as fire flies slipping into puddles of summer dusk drownings

the machine made to look like a child's toy, barred it's teeth, and seethed under shackle, and saddle

you will show us the way to your world the voice from the decking sighs, slipping into sibilants, a thing roughly man shaped standing just out of reach faces the dying pony~

man shaped, and sized in glittering surprised living cloths, squirming, roiled, a face attached to a head, like a fist shoved in a throat~ with horribly sizzling eye wafted invapored

a hand gestures to the black winking stars~

I'll point~ and you can say when~ this wont take long~is this your home~? the hand like a stick poked into a rotting fruit, carved with a knife points randomly at white red blue green ink spot dots, waving~

one of these stars is YOUR HOME SYSTEM~ MACHINE~ let me ride upon your back ~take me there~i really want to see a world of toys and children, these fields and forests~

let me free first~unchain my legs, get me inside this vessel and i will show you vengeance and take your corpse to hell

a long pony face veined and angered spits evaporated air full of words, the man shaped thing steps forward and points~

your little friend wouldn't hold my hand either machine~ is your world in some childhood heaven for martyrs and heathen~alike ?

the rider bound to the unicorns back, braided to saddle slowly shrivels in vacuum, hair, burning off scalp. flesh crinkling, turning brown, bony checks pulling back from bright crisp tooth, clothing crumbling away to dust and gases, eyes squeezed shut, ears nose finger tips floating off into the startling sunlight in small brown puffs

Sarrow, I'm so sorry the unicorn cries out~ I'm so sorry. . . you have died like this~ in front of this witness

and the tethered unicorn feels unburdened as the girl, seated upon the saddle disintegrates, floats off~forever in fluttering particle

now there is room for me to sit the man shaped thing laughs, would you like some tea, perhaps a party~ now that your master is within death, you are free~show me a star~pick one~ take me there~

and the ship leaps, jumps and vaults six, ten forty, a hundred times

in swirling milky curdles~stops, over a green world, agitated

WE ARE HOME LITTLE MACHINE~ SARROW LOOKED, I FOLLOWED HER EYES, BEFORE SHE DIED, SHE TOLD ME, SHE DIDN'T WANT TO DIE ALONE, HEAVEN'S A LONELY PLACE FOR HUMAN TOYS. she didn't want to tell me, she just couldn't help herself

`

NOOOOO !

the terribly troubled unicorn screams and shatters it's chains lunging at. . .nothing but emptiness

tell the story right, Sarrow squeaks, as a fleck of dust within a mote, awash in tears

so your going to write a sci~fi book

it's really hard to stay focused on writing a crappy novel when such great movies are on TV

when your eyes can only dream of the lusciousness of summer gardens

like beautiful ice picks~ stabbing me in the face

my wife doesn't own a cell phone and leaves the house unattached to the voice of millions

having never actually done anything in my life it's hard to draw upon experience ~ build a novel about sitting in a van waiting for tides to swing

spend all day waiting for people to bring you things

imagine a world of nothing~

but wind whispering~

i am backed up against the wall of everything i know~

my space suit is black~ full of holes~ and stinks