the tree and the dust chapter 11

Chapter 11
The littlest clam, sat in the tiny pool of filth and bathed in frozen acids, while it’s fingers stretched for kilometers across the room’s ship, the ship’s breaths, with an invisible touch it watched the world and spoke to it’s machines, who watched the human child, trapped within a snowglode world, turned over and over, shaken, to blizzard~
Where~
The Mother caressed her downy hair, with claw like fingers, woven of soft foam glass, muttering, in the language of human, while the captured infant burned and struggled against the tit, cried and wailed, even as the machine intelligence buried within her brain, planned and thought, experiment, squelching commands at the mother, every second, every micro second~ build shelter, create fire, ponder combustible, food, suit ? Space suit !
The intelligence hidden within the child, Sarrow, whispered and screamed, Kill the child, euthanize, abort, the surrounding environment possessed vast hurdle of insurmountable variables, this child can’t survive here, poking into the Mothers cobalt innards, stabbing, knifing, surgically lifting the veils of this creations charms
Found the tendrils, laced and buried leading to the vast mega ship world, and trailed down to the Verigee, the little bivalve bathed in ice, in absolute zero liquid spools, an icy micro intelligence,
Sarrow’s Assistant, backed away and left no trails, sliding sideways, back to the mother, I know where we are, Sarrow, this is a prison, a laboratory, or zoo, a space ship~ you can’t survive here,
And the babies brain, which couldn’t organize the motor control to manipulate it’s own hands, closed her eyes and looked within~
This artificial Mother will protect us~
We can trust it
Tell it to pull us in, rebuild it, I’m so hungry~
So while Sarrow suckled and ate, a broth of lactate, her enhanced brain probed the mother for some protocol to survival, against the snow, ice and wind, which was this world they’d all been thrown upon

While the Mother accepted the assistance intelligence, latched on through lips, to fibrous frozen mechanics, and the Assistant crawled inside the mother with one slow prodding pathway, and changed them both into other

Slow the babies time, creep the metabolism down to hibernation, and build an environment into which it can survive, searching other’s memories, searching the air the wind the ground the sky for some raw material, some material, some fiber, some source for warmth, a space suit, a thermal blanket, internal combustion, the sun, a star, a fire~

Nothing, a nothing world of cold icy rock

When she tastes it~ the minute, but vast flavor of bacteria. . .

the tree and the dust chapter 9

http://blownbrown.blogspot.com/2010/03/dead-have-faces-automobiles.html

new van related post over at blownbrown




Chapter 9

The Ecoraseur anti-evolution ship, sat in a puddle of it’s own filth ~an atmosphere of ruined ships, worlds, satellites, men, bodies, globules of water, blood, piss, whole swirling menagerie of things once broken, set enflame, ripped across the sky, like a black shit, a blunt two edged knife, battle scarred, bent, ruptured, mangled and falling apart, flat black against the night, all nights, with twin lightning bolt insignias, flashing in neon crack, wings, engine, pods antennae, huge trailing globes, like chains, sparkling in starlight, thundering motor roar, sub arc, doppled explosions of atmospheric tears
Within, this great deathly destroyer, slightly wavering, at the very rubicon of demise, three men like things stand in perfect yellow spot light, one tapping a foot, one crossing and uncrossing thick uniformed arms, the third, rubbing it’s face,
Ghouls, in tattered uniform, flesh like swamp primed meat, grey, sagging, checks pulling on brown clotted eyelids, hang open, pink with wet yellowed eye, stretched red weep
Helmets propped on shoulders, gutted, punctured, stained,
Around these three men like things, the deck, fizzled, popped and creaked, lights flickered on and off
We really must find something to destroy
The foot taper whispers and the other two turn their heads,
Yes, in agreement, they’d been sweeping this system for years of weeks, had killed millions of baby plankton but nothing more, nothing with any weight to it, nothing important had died at their ships command and they grew bored
I’m bored the face rubbing man, whines, lets go, lets go, we gotta roll out roll out.

While behind them seated on the black pitted decking a small clan of hominids huddled, and spoke a language three million years old which sounded like wind brushed off the back of starlings, like pebbles being slowly tumbled down creek beds, like swaying grasses against august’s combustible clouds~
"We should bury this dead crew~" the female hominid whispers, hands dancing towards her hair combed straight back and slick with color~
"Our ship is too slow to follow the Other~"
'This ship will infect us~ look at these humans, dead things on legs, their eyes blinded~ this ship, a museum of shit ~ I agree we should leave these creatures, but, only after~"

"We’ll follow you, from our homeships, we will join your hunt~" standing, the small clan speaks, stares at the backs of three greasy, crawly, scabbed out heads and necks wrinkled space suits, primitive, painted a faded green patina of arcane design and age. Who jump startled~
The display screens beyond, flickering, image racked, pop, and sizzle, blips and alerts,
The three men like things, decomposing, turn quickly then, like starving ballerina,
Your leaving, already, we could find you something to wear, we might have some more space suits, we’ll dig around, wait, have dinner with us~
The three men like things all let their eyes fall down in awe at the group of naked warriors, men and women, in paint and oils, hair perfectly combed back, muscles bulged over wide shoulders, brown skinned, thick boned, well hung, nipples like knives~ a beautiful people, calm, empty handed,
You came naked, and weaponless
Let us give you clothes and weapons~ you can stay in our gardens~
"We are born this way, we die this way, weapons are for the weak, a weapon will not save you~
Our ship wait’s the children must be feed~"
You will follow us then, yes, yes, we gotta go can you keep up, you have to tell us~ we don’t want to loose you~ you smell delicious
"We shall follow, this hunt is very important to us~" this collective is serious and the pack of hominids turns and flash, a few steps taken, a sidestep, a twist and they disappear
How do they do that ? One man says
How did they get on our ship ? Another ponders, running hands along control knobs
What people are they ? Are they us ?
While the great black splash carbon painted ship buckles beneath their feet and they stand on deck consulting with computation device, studying screen, grown dim, cobwebbed, watching feed of live action, empty halls, chambers, passage
I think they are still on board

But outside the greasy slick hull, the clan, crawls under Green leaf clam shell hatch, lays down and grabs a thick stalk like handle, nine hominids, on a bumpy stick, like a broom freshly carved and sewn, sweeps out and away, swirling, erratic, unseen, a blip than winks and is gone~

We’ll search the ship from beginning to end~ Try to find theirs, where could it float ?
We’ll use the Machine, if we have to~
Yeahs, we shall, the one who rubs the face says and thinks of the smells still wafting along the stagnant air like stratus, layers of life itself
The one who rubs his face, raises his head and turns, tries to smile, and uses a hand to push the flesh, the others at controls, brittle plastics, aged crumbled, drool, and look at vid and pix of haunted hallways, empty rooms, still pads and hangers, a ship full of ghosts, quietly looking for life
and now, invaded by animals~ who smell like flowers and creek beds, honey dew and blood~

yes, one has stayed behind~ the once man thinks turning to viewers plump with palimpsest smeared stars

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 6

get up and look at your child~

the incredibly old man groans through the sweat, blood and snot of his moustashe, stepping to where the girl, almost seductively barely dressed in her night cloths, lay collapsed turned away from the horror of this battle, slaughter and crash

the five or six velveteen robots step back in unison, as a black gloved hand reaches to grab her, and pull her to her feet, when the air explodes in fire~like screaming

get up, face the child, you gave up to the death~

it's dead, i can't look, i need a suit, can't breath. . .

the hand clutches her ruffled cloth and pulls, shredding, and twisting her to her feet to strip her bare,

face the child as it faces the elements and it's birth, naked, cold and so . . . few steps to death,

the incredibly old man in black and silver uniform pushes the girl toward the squirming, fungus covered newborn, asphyxiating in the sucking atmosphere

it's dead, it has the Volve~ are you happy I'm looking, you wanted me to watch a child die, I'll watch~

and her eyes well up with boiling tears, beneath the golden brown, pale blistering skin, watches a sick pink and green human child fight the touch of bacterial assault, the creche, covered in blood, shit and placenta, you poor little thing~ and she can feel her left tit lactate, a thin curdled line of moisture leaking down the curve of her breasts~

my child she mummers a monody~

remove this uniform!

she turns and sees two robots at each side of the old man, they pull down from his shoulders and strip off his black suit which makes hissing sucking, vacuum seal sounds of breaking, and the old, man, standing evaporating in the deathly air, in sweat drenched adrenaline's repose, naked, thin scarred, burned, flesh the color of moonlight, beautiful, starpoints tattooed across his chest

take the suit, put it on and save the child~ he orders and the suit takes a step back to stand with the robots, who close there eyes and whistle~

the child is infected~ there is no cure~ there's no ship, were trapped here~ where can we go~

oh, god. she whispers when she sees the long hand carved blade of deep dark oak, half a meter, tapered to paper thin edge,

only the blood of the chosen can save this child~ the suit and the robots will take you to safety, i thank you~ with all my heart,

the incredibly old man steps before the baby and raises the blade to hover over his heart, and the olive tinged name tattooed above the beat, Sarrow, a pause, a snow shadow passes across his eye, a trickle of sweat, rolls the creases of his check, the girl clutches her breasts, and watches the blade plunge into the flesh, through the bone and into the heart which explodes, dumping it's fountain of blood into the creche, baptizing the child

the girl yells and dives for his hands and is held back, crying, now she knows who this incredibly old man really is~

the robots step in, one grabs the baby and holds it under the hot stream of blood, another holds the old man up as his knees weaken, another holds the creche under the baby ~the blood and the snows washing away the bacterium fungus, until the baby turns, opens it's eyes, black~ and screams~ a robot, grabs it by the feet, pinches off the umbilical cord and holds it dripping a thick dark carpet of red as the old man holds his lips tight and holds the knife with two hands as velveteen robots drag him back and away, dying screaming~with the pain of all of his life's memories kicking in his thoughts, begging for one last attention

Another robot takes the baby from the filth~ presses it into the girls chest~ she clutches it and hugs it to her, she's crying and rocking back and forth, as the robots surround her like flowers, like buttercup armies, like dolls against god~

to watch the snow fall without process, thoughtless

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