jamieproctor.ca

The machine was one of the very few things older than the lighthouse-keeper, formed of certain elemental substances that were designed less for durability and more for solidity, for an essential ignorance of the power of time.

It went ‘plip.’

That was interesting and new.  It had been a long time since anything had been interesting and new for the lighthouse-keeper.  They weren’t quite sure how to feel about that.

So they checked the other machines, the ones that would never go ‘plip,’ and they found a little spec with a little light drifting very nearby in the surrounding hundred million cubic miles, practically next-door. 

Well now!

Well.  Now. 

Now it was obvious what to do. 

***

It was a shockingly crude little thing, all hasty riveting and curdling metals on top of a fuming, spitting fusion drive.  The flare that had drawn the gaze of the lighthouse-keeper’s machine had been caused by a one-in-a-billion chance particle bouncing through its flimsy sides and setting off a near-cataclysmic chain failure of its internal systems. 

There was one occupant, who was dead.  Luckily this was a very new problem for them and the lighthouse-keeper possessed a very old solution, which they bolted onto the occupant’s chest with some care and no fumbling.  They’d never used this device, and certainly never on one so tiny, but there’d been time for practice to drive away any conceivable doubts. 

It took a little while.  The lighthouse-keeper prepared some hydration, then prepared some nourishment, then simply sat and stared at something they hadn’t stared at before.  It was very refreshing. 

The occupant’s wheezy breathing took on a harsh edge as muscles took over from machinery.  Their heart beat on its own.  Their eyelids flickered and flittered.  And finally they opened them. 

“Hello,” said the lighthouse-keeper.  “How are you?”
“Awful.  Am I dead?”
“Not anymore.  What’s your name?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the lighthouse-keeper.  What’s your name?”

“Where am I?”
“The lighthouse.  What’s your name?”
“What’s the lighthouse?”
The lighthouse-keeper tried not saying anything, and that did the trick.  “Motte.  Major Motte.”
“Nice to meet you.  The lighthouse is an observation post.”
“For what?”
“You, I think.”
“You think?”
“It’s been a very long time.  I’ve forgotten details.”
Major Motte’s body language was somewhat stiff due to their death, but the movement of their facial features was wonderfully expressive.  The lighthouse-keeper was sure that if they were more familiar with their species, there would be no end of detail they could glean from it.

“What happened to me?”
“Your vehicle was struck by a small particle.  A very low chance of happening, but it wasn’t fit to withstand the force and lost functionality.  I retrieved it and repaired you.  Why were you in such a garbage heap?”
“A WHAT?”
“You made me ask my last question three times; this time please give me courtesy.  Why?  It’s not a very good vehicle.  It’s dangerous, and slipshod, and fragile, and you were all that was aboard.”
“I was a volunteer,” said Major Motte. 

Now it was the lighthouse-keeper’s turn to be surprised.  “Why?”
“I was the first.  The first out of our solar system, the first human traveller to visit – was going to visit – another star.  The first actual intelligence to transmit information home.”
“Why would you want to do that?” asked the lighthouse-keeper incredulously.  “There’s nothing out there.”
Major Motte’s face did the most interesting things yet.  “Nothing?  Nothing!?  What do you call this?  What do you call yourself?  I haven’t even made it to my destination yet and I was contacted by the first proof of extra-terrestrial life we’ve ever documented!  This is not NOTHING!  YOU are not nothing!”

“I seem to have upset you.  My apologies.  But I do mean this sincerely: there’s nothing out there.  That’s why this lighthouse was built.”
“Your turn to answer my question then,” shot back Major Motte, “what is the lighthouse?”

The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted.  “A post to keep an eye on something.  It’s so scarce, you see.  Any trace of something should be looked at.  Some of the somethings helped us do this after we looked at them long enough.  It was a bit of a numbers game.”
“Then…then I’m trying to do the same thing!  You’re just me, but ahead of the curve!”
“Agreed,” said the lighthouse-keeper.

“Then why discourage us?  Discourage me?”
“There’s nothing out there.”
“If there was nothing but nothing, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted.  “Functionally, I might as well have not done so.  Would you like some hydration and nutrition?”

“Please.”

***

They ate.  It was simpler than it seemed; apparently life on Major Motte’s planet was still basically carbon and some other bits.

“I would like to talk to your leadership,” Major Motte said at last, once they were finished ingesting their frankly absurd amount of hydration. 

“That is not possible.”
“Communication delays?  Or something else?”
“Both.  I haven’t heard from anyone else in seventeen million years.”
“You’re seventeen million years old?”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty million years?”

“No, twenty years.  A copy of my consciousness is recorded in the lighthouse and placed into a new body at the end of my natural lifespan.”
“That’s horrible.”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted.  “It would seem so.”
“What happened to your people?”
“Who knows?  It could have been anything.  War between each other, a big rock in the wrong place at the wrong time, biosphere collapse, resource starvation, unilateral suicide.  Nobody sends everyone all the news all the time.  One little lapse at a wrong moment and everyone was quiet and I don’t know why.”

“There’s nobody left?”
“There might be other lighthouse-keepers.”
“There were many of you?  You found multiple other worlds bearing life?”
“Four.”
“How long did your people look for them?”
“One billion years.”

 Major Motte’s face didn’t do anything at all this time.

“I told you,” said the lighthouse-keeper.  “There is nothing out there.”

“What did the other four lighthouse-keepers find?”
“I’m not sure.  It’s been a while.  I think three of them suffered stellar collapse.  One of them produce ten sapient species.  One of those made contact with us.  I think they went extinct a hundred million years ago.”
“How?  Why?”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted.  “I’m not sure.  History is like everything else, you know.  There’s nothing out there.  There is so much nothing out there and the something is so small that in the end – there is no end – nothing wraps around it entirely, no matter what.”

A little bit of Major Motte’s face moved, and once again the lighthouse-keeper felt a little regret that they had no idea what that meant, and likely never would. 

“I’ve got to leave,” said Major Motte.

“Where to?”
“Wherever your orders used to come from.  I was flying blind before, but now I might as well follow my leads.”
“There’s nothing there.”
“Nonetheless.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Nonetheless.”
“You are extremely pointless,” said the lighthouse-keeper, “but I will help you with this, since you want it.”
“Thank you.”

The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted. 

“What is that?” asked Major Motte.
“What is what?”
“That thing you do where you expand laterally and contract.”
“I am filled with overwhelming sorrow.”
“Oh.  I thought maybe you were shrugging in ambivalence.”
“No.”

***

Major Motte’s vehicle departed not long thereafter, aimed for a different star. 

The lighthouse-keeper watched their trail go cold, and waited.

The machine did not go plip. 

But there was still time.  Plenty of time.  And plenty of nothing to fill it. 

The giant walked slowly, fingers half-clenched at his sides, arms swaying, and head always, always, always, always pointed at the ground. 

There was a lot down there, and it confused him.  And being confused made him nervous.  And being nervous made him frightened.  And being frightened was the worst thing in the universe. 

So he kept an eye on it, just in case.

Woosh and up came his foot, seven leagues in one long clumsy swing, woosh and THUMP and down again, carefully placed. 

Not sure what that thing to the left was, best avoid it.  Not sure what that thing to the right could be, better steer clear here.  What’s up ahead?  Might want to take this step short. 

Gullies.  Quarries.  Creeks.  Peaks.  So many things, so many little things that could creep up and stab a sole or twist an ankle. 

Eyes on the ground.  Always, always, always on the ground. 

But they were very very big eyes and the ground was so very very little, so now and then something would happen and go crunch and the giant would have to stop for a while until his nerves forgave him and his toes stopped hurting. 

***

Now and then was today. 

It hadn’t gone crunch though.  More of a squish. 

The giant lifted up his foot, fearing to see the red sticky smear that usually meant a very bad day indeed, but found only damp earth and mangled furniture. 

“Hello,” said his big toe. 

“Hello, toe,” said the giant to his big toe.  “Why are you talking to me now?”
“Up here,” said his big toe. 

The giant looked up there.  There was someone on his big toe.  That explained things completely.  “Hello, not my toe,” said the giant.  “What are you doing there?”
“A toe came through my house,” explained the someone on his big toe.  “I ended up on top of it, so no harm done.”
“Oh thank goodness,” said the giant.  “I was worried I stepped on someone again.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“Twice.  But it’d happen more if I didn’t look out for it.”
“You keep an eye out, huh?”
“All the time.  There’s so much down there, and it’s all so small, and confusing, which makes me nervous, which makes me frightened, which is the worst thing in the universe.  So I have to watch my feet.”
“All the time?”
“All the time.”

“Watching my feet would get awfully tiresome after a few days,” mused the someone on the giant’s big toe.  “Don’t you get sick of it?”
“If I did, the worst thing in the universe would happen,” said the giant.  “So I can’t.”
“Huh.  Bit of a pity, that is.  I bet you have a great view from up there.”

“No, I have to squint a lot.”

“Not a great view of the ground.  A great view of the horizon.”
The giant scratched his head and dandruff fell like rain.  “The horizon?”
“Over there.  And there.  And there.  And there.  And there.”
“That’s a lot of horizon,” said the giant uneasily.  “How come I’ve never heard of it?”
“You’ve never looked for it.  It’s all around you.  Go on, take a peek.”
The giant pursed his lips.  “Promise to tell me if something gets under my feet?”
“Sure.  Go on, try it.”
So the giant raised his head for the first time in as long as he could remember and tried it. 

***

It made him dizzy. 

“Woah,” said the giant.  And even that sounded weird, with his neck all straightened out and his throat unclenched.  “Woah.  Woah woah woah.”

“ ,” said the someone on the giant’s big toe. 

The giant leaned back down again. 

“How was it?” they repeated. 

“Big,” said the giant.  “Really, really big.  I think it might be bigger than me.”
“Was it okay?”
The giant thought about it.  “It was alright.  Nice to see something new.  But I’m a little nervous I could step on something while I’m looking at it.  Or something might creep underneath my feet and get squashed.  Or-”

“Tell you what,” said the someone on the giant’s big toe, “why don’t you come back here later and take a look at the horizon again, and I can keep an eye out to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
This seemed fair and reasonable to the giant, so he agreed to it and walked off.  And his feet seemed a little less clumsy, and the ground seemed a little less confusing. 

***

“I saw things,” he told the someone on his big toe.  “Big fluffy things.  White and grey and blue and black.”

“Those are clouds,” they told him.

“I like them, I think,” he said.  And he walked off and took surer, straighter steps that weren’t quite as cut short.

***

“I saw things,” he told the someone on his right foot.  “Little flittery things that went up and down and up and down and up and down and honked.”
“Those are geese,” they told him.

“I think they’re funny, I think,” he said.  And he walked off and his back was a little straighter. 

***

“I saw something else,” he told the someone leaning against his right leg. “It was so blue it turned black with shine in it and the sun was white.”
“That was the night,” they told him. 

“I think I like it.  But how come I’ve never seen it before?”

“It’s over the horizon,” they said.  “You have to lean just right and look just so and then go farther.”

“Farther than what?” asked the giant. 

“Farther than you know.”
The giant itched his arm and thought about it.  “That confuses me,” he said.  “And what confuses me makes me nervous.  And what makes me nervous makes me frightened.  And being frightened is the worst thing in the universe.”

“But?” asked the someone leaning against his right leg.
“But I want to see it anyways,” said the giant.  And straightened up and looked.  And then looked farther.

And farther. 

And farther.

And farther.

And farther.

And farther up until there was nothing but everything there was. 

***

“Oh,” said the giant.  “Oh.”
“What did you see?” asked the someone standing beside them. 

“Everything,” said the giant, shaking his head.  “Absolutely everything.”
“There’s a lot of it,” they said. 

“Yes,” said the giant.  Creeks and peaks seemed very ordinary just now.  Very small, but close enough to touch.  “A lot of it everywhere.  I thi.  I thin.  I think.”
“Yes?” asked the someone standing beside them.

“I like it,” said the giant.  “I like it.  I’m going to go for a walk now.”
“Mind your step?”
“I don’t need to anymore,” said the giant.

And he went on his way, on his walk, with the world all around him. 

“C’mon.  Do it.”
“Uhhh…”
“What’s the matter, shy?”
“No.  No!”
“Oh, is it your first time?  That’s okay, you know.  Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s-”

“Don’t go lying to me right now.  Look, just do what comes naturally.  Bite me right about here, where my skin is ten times thicker than yours.”

The blue shark would’ve blushed if he were physically capable, but he wasn’t, so he didn’t.

He did, however, sink his teeth directly into the other blue shark’s side.

“Oww.  Oww.  Ouch.  Ouch ouch ouch.”
“Fowwy.”
“No ouch ouch that’s ow fine that’s ow how it’s ack meant to ow feel.  Argh.  I’m extremely turned on now ow ow ow this is actually very hotaaaaaaaaagh.”
“Fokay.”

There was a very prolonged pause filled with several awkward things.

“My cloaca’s farther down.”

“Fowwy.”
Goddamned virgins.  Ignorance was okay, but never asking questions?

***

“What light through yonder web breaks?”
Good, good.  He was getting her curious.

“It is the east, and you are the sun!”
Oh, now she saw where this was going.

“Impossibly huge and powerful, ravenously gorging yourself upon the universe!  I am a trapped gnat before you, humbly serving no purpose save to feed your divine flame!”

Okay that was enough.  “Come here you little dirty-talking slut,” she told him, and pounced.

“Thank you very much, my lady,” he said as she started working on his relatively tiny and feeble extremities.
“Less talk more action, loverboy,” she said, halfway through his first leg.  “I’m absolutely not slowing down after that intro.”

Tragically he only got to sixth base before she chewed through his abdomen.  Damn her weakness for smooth talkers; they never lived up to their own hype.

***

Solitary the Komodo dragon sat, ten feet long and hundreds of pounds, strong-tailed and scaly-backed. Her mouth was closed, her tens of serrated surfaces tucked away beneath bloody gums and firmed lips, backed by idle muscles that could tear flesh from bone and limb from life.

Stomach half-full of yesterday’s deer, body warmed by the afternoon’s heat, spine pleasantly supple with the relaxation of a day spent doing nothing in particular, there had been few more happy times in her life.

She stared at the sunset’s sea and thought about things that had nothing to do with life or death or self or other, and then something inside her ovaries went ‘plunk.’

“Aw fuck,” said the dragon.  “Not again.”

This was her THIRD YEAR IN A ROW undergoing parthenogenesis.  Damn her stupid biological clock.

At least maybe this time she wouldn’t eat all of them.

***

The flight was beautiful – loops, twirls, drunken corkscrews, spinning through a sky far above the ant colony.  The tunnels and the workers and her fat flightless mother all suddenly so far away that she could’ve blotted them out of her mind just like that – like THAT – they were so small and pointless.

This was what she wanted to do!  What she wanted to do was fly!

She also wanted to do someone, and so convenient it was that the air near her was thick with drones.  One of the tastier looking ones was looping around her right now, and the attraction was looking very much mutual.

A bit of petting in the air, but that was nothing at all – just a touch that made her want more.  She wanted to fly and fuck and nothing else, a little squeeze wasn’t going to cut it. 

So they went down to the rain-damp ground where there was more leverage and then it started and was immediately over.

“Well, bye,” said the drone, and took off again. 

“Excuse me?” she asked. 

“Job’s done.  Gonna go starve to death now,” his voice echoed faintly back at her. 

“Excuse ME?” she asked.

Then her wings fell off and landed in the mud.

At that moment she finally, completely, and fully understood why her mother had always seemed so crabby.

***

“New guy today.”
Lisa blinked.  “Huh?  Didn’t hear about that.”
“It was late last night; you were out swiping that hyena kill with Lottie.  He popped up early morning, swatted Leo stupid and sent him whining off.”
“Oh.”  Lisa rolled over and aimlessly pawed at the steaming savannah air, her fluffy tummy rippling in the breeze.  “Is he hot?”
“If you like older guys I guess?  Looks like someone ate his ear though.”
“Kinky.”
“Like, a crocodile.”
“Oh.  Less kinky.”

“Yeah, it’s not a clean bite.”
“Gross.”
“The ol’ twist-n-tear.”
“Gross gross.”
“Like, that thing where you’ve got a good grip on a gazelle’s leg and you just give it a turn and a YANK and-”

“Gross gross gross.  Hey, is that Lenore?”
“Aw fuck it is.  Don’t make eye contact.”
“Too late, here she comes.  What’s eating HER?”
“Not her, her cubs.  And it was new guy.”
“Oh right.”
“God, she will NOT shut up about it though.  You’d think she’d never had her offspring killed to stimulate her reproductive readiness before.”
“I know, right?  Queen, please.”
Lenore sat down right in front of them.

“All my cubs are dead,” she said. 

“Yeah, we heard.”
“Yeah, she told me.”
“He just offed ‘em!  The little shits had finally stopped nursing!”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yep.”
“And NOW I get to go through that ALL OVER AGAIN.  Teething and everything!”
“Sucks.”
“Ayuh.”
At least the sun wasn’t the most tedious part of midday anymore, Lisa guessed.

“Orders came through!” shouted the sergeant over the not-actually-distant thunder of artillery shells turning the ground into mud pies. “Seize the hill!”

“Aw hell,” said McClunksy, spitting theatrically.  “Why we gotta?”
“Do it or you’re a buttmunch.”
“You take that back you son of a bitch!”
“Seize the hill or you’re a buttmunch.  Buttmunch.  Butt.  Munch.  Butty butty buttmunche-”

McClunksy snarled in fathomless rage and hate, snatched up his rifle, and began eeling his way up the hill, choosing each tuft of grass and clod of earth with care to block the sight of his round little helmet advancing upwards, towards the enemy. 

“And that goes for the rest of you!” said the sergeant.  “Stop trying to sneak off when I’m not looking.  Peck!  Dobson!  Clarke!  Get your rears in gears and go kill those dumbasses.”
“My leg’s tired and I peed myself,” whined Clarke. 

“You can pee yourself when you’re dead!  Get up that hill, you dope!”
“I’m NOT a dope!”
“PROVE it!  Dobson, I just TOLD you to stop trying to sneak off when I’m not looking!  Just for that, you can go first!”
“McClunksy went first.”
“Then you’re second.  What are you, chicken?”
“I’m NOT chicken!”
“Prove it and get out there!”

And so, after much cajoling, threatening, taunting, and peer pressure, the squad started their journey into hell, because none of them wanted to be chicken, babies, or big fat losers. 

Worse had been done for less cause. 

***

“Throw the damned grenade, Peck!” roared the sergeant. 
“My arm hurts.”
“It can hurt when it’s dead!”
“You’re ALWAYS telling me to do things when I’m dead!” pouted Peck.  “I don’t wanna!  Why not make Clarke throw the grenade?”
“Clarke’s pinned down under enemy fire, you get to throw the grenade and by every devil and demon in hell you are going to do that right now damnit!”
“Don’t wannnaaaaaaa-”

“CORPORAL PECK IF YOU START A TANTRUM RIGHT NOW IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ASSAULT I WILL PUT YOUR ASS OVER MY KNEE DO YOU HEAR ME?”
Peck turned his back to the sergeant and kicked viciously at a rolling fragment of what had once been a man. 

“Look.  Throw the grenade, and when we get back, you can have an extra MRE.”

Silence. 

Then: “One of the beef ones?”
“Yes, one of the beef ones.”
“…okay.  But just this once.”
“Good.  Here’s the grenade.”
Peck wound up threw it and turned a gun emplacement and five men into a jumbled mess. 

“Fuck yeah!”
“Language!”

“Eat shit!”
“LANGUAGE OR NO MRE!”
“Dickhead!”
“Acceptable!”

***

They attained the summit at long last, delayed by a vicious fight between Clarke and McClunsky over whether or not Spider-man or batman would be a bigger help right now.

“We’re here.  Good job, men.”
“Uggh,” said Clarke, bellyflopping. 

“Tiiired,” whined Peck, sprawled out like a beached seal. 

“Are we done?” yawned McClunsky.  “I wanna go home now.”
“We have to hold it first.  C’mon.  Peck, you’re on sniper duty; McClunsky, unship the flamethrower.”

“Oh boy!”
Clarke frowned.  “McClunsky ALWAYS gets the flamethrower.  Why can’t I have the flamethrower?”
“Knock it off, Clarke – you know damned well the flamethrower’s McClunsky’s responsibility.”
“Why does HE get to be responsible!  I’m responsible!”
“Yeah you are.  You’re responsible for the first aid supplies.”
“Those are boring stuff for GIRLS,” said Clarke, stomping his feet.  “I want to use the flamethrower!  McClunsky never shares the flamethrower, and you said sharing is good!  He’s being a selfish asshole!”
“Language, Clarke!  Don’t you dare talk about your squadmate that way.  LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU.  Thank you.  Now you stop giving me sass and you apologiz – look, never mind.  Just stop trying to take McClunsky’s stuff.  How would you feel if we took your stuff?”
“Good.  Bandaids are stupid.”
“They aren’t bandaids, Clarke.”

***

The counter-attack was fierce and furious. 

“Woooo!” shouted McClunsky cheerfully, piping molten death into the faces of his fellow humans.  “Eat it!  Hahahah!  Owned, bitches!  Owned!  Owned!  Owned!  Noobs!”
“Language, McClunsky,” said the sergeant.  “Peck, there’s one downslop-”

“I KNOW, okay?  Stop telling me what to do!”
“I’m just making sure you do it right.”
“You don’t trust me!  You never trust me!  You don’t trust anyone but McClunsky because he’s your favorite!”
“I don’t have favorites, I love you all equally.”
“You’re lying!”

There was a little ‘spang’ sound and a bullet smacked into the sergeant’s backpack. 

“Peck?  Do your chores.”
“Ugh.  Fine.  This is abuse.”

“All done!” shouted McClunsky brightly from downslope. 

Then a shell hit him and he went away. 

***

The lieutenant looked like a visitor from some strange other world, picking his way through the smoke and smouldering ashes and burnt metal.  A heron wading through the reeds. 

“Sergeant.  Well done.  Victory is ours, and your men deserve congratulations for their part in it.”

“Not all of them, sir.  McClunsky is gone.”
The lieutenant followed the sergeant’s pointing finger to the physical evidence that was all that remained of McClunsky’s mortal presence on this earth and threw up a little in his mouth.

“I can’t….I can’t believe he’s gone!” he gasped out, once the retching was done.  “He was going to go home, start a family-”

“Asked him yesterday, sir; he still thought kissing was gross.”

“-go home, rejoin his family.  And now he’s just been turned into a meat crater by some half-awake dork at a little console miles away.  What kind of death is that?”
The sergeant shook his grizzled, pube-chinned thirteen-year-old head.  “It’s the kind we’re given, sir.  War is a young man’s game.”

“So, how have you heard the song?”

Sixteen times I’d heard that question today.  I wanted to smack, punch, kick, and swear at the brightly cheerful face asking me the question six miles into a ten mile hike.  The bus driver wouldn’t take us to the Inglevale stop. 

That didn’t deter anyone else packed on there with me.  They’d all heard a song, you see, and what was a little walk compared to that?  And besides, it gave them a chance to compare notes.  Constantly. 

So I smiled and I lied and I spun my little story about how it had been.  Every bit of it was true, but not all the bits were from the same place.  God only knows we’d had enough choices back at the bureau.  Half the hitchhiking traffic in the country was Inglevale-bound. 

“Great!” said the cheerful idiot when I was done waxing earnest at her.  Her face was half freckles and half grin and all mad.  “Not far now!”

And it wasn’t.  Inglevale town limits were ahead, just on the lip of the hill. 

***

Up until six months ago, the most noteworthy thing Inglevale produced was dirt.  Gravel, to be specific.  Decent stone there for that, and not much else. 

Then the bottom of a gravel pit opened up and dropped a bulldozer down it, and the man inside – dragged out after six breathless hours of the first actual excitement the place had ever known – says he saw god. 

Fair enough, that happens sometimes. 

Then the whole town listened to him. 

That’s a little rarer. 

And now there’s whole busloads and roving vans and train cars packed full of pilgrims, all moving across the country in bands of one to forty, following the song that Bowser Fenton told them would come. 

That’s downright rare.  Who the fuck names their kid ‘Bowser’?

***

I’d expected a little less… purpose, I admit. 

Cults have enthusiasm.  They don’t necessary have know-how.  No matter how earnest and fervent the loonies are, once everyone’s busy diving the will of the universe they tend to let toilets clog and streets fill with trash. 

Inglevale was an anthill.  A proper, functioning anthill, not one overturned by a careless shoe.  The streets were full and they were churning; bodies going every which way, people hurrying eagerly from task to task, moving metal, moving timber, clearing away garbage, and laughing, talking, chattering constantly, always about that damned song. 

Was this a religion or a construction crew?

What were they building?

And what was the fastest way for me to answer those two questions, so that –

“So, how have you heard the song?”
– I would never have to hear that one again?

***

Work answered some of my problems.  I grabbed onto a repurposed dump truck laden with shiny new parts along with half the crowd around me, took it down to the construction site. 

It was by the lake.  Made sense, I suppose, since it’s the one thing Inglevale has that’s noteworthy.  Big ol’ gravel pit that flooded out and they just shrugged and put up some beaches. 

What made less sense was what they were building.  At first I thought it was obscured by a cloud of scaffolding; then we got closer and I realized it was nothing BUT scaffolding.  Some kind of lunatic antenna? 

“The song swells!” called down a worker, sweaty and smiling and forty feet in the air. 

“So it does!” chorused the truckers. 

Work wasn’t too bad.  People did what they were comfortable with; welding, hauling, assembly.  I’d seen worse safety setups on certified and monitored construction sites, frankly, which was all the more impressive given there didn’t seem to be any foremen.  Nobody giving any instruction at all, actually.  Made finding out what I was meant to be doing all the more troublesome; people just went were they were needed which – against all reason – always seemed to be the right place.  I felt like a blind cat in a rocking chair factory, only all the chairs were full of other perfectly happy blind cats that wouldn’t stop yowling encouragement at me.

And asking me about the damned song. 

Rest for the night was surprisingly comfy.  The out-of-towners were being put up across town in a patchwork of spare rooms, Inglevale’s singular hotel, and the many motels scattered along the fringe of its desolate highway – I scored an empty room in the latter, where I spent the night making notes and trying to ignore someone noisily having bad but enthusiastic sex next door. 

I must have looked bad in the morning; I stumbled outside into a parking lot that had been turned into an emergency breakfast buffet, and by the time I made it out the other side I’d had four brownies and a waffle stuffed into my arms.

The waffle was buttered.  Wonder if the song told them to do that. 

***

The report was due in three days and I still wasn’t learning anything new besides how to be a perfectly adequate and safe high-rise worker. 

Well, that wasn’t entirely true.  I’d gotten several more unanswered questions. 

How the hell did the town get swept up in this so…fully?  Everyone was in on it.  EVERYONE.  No cult’s that good.  No sign of expulsion of the unbelievers or mass graves in the woods.

What was the thing we were building?  Progress was lightning-fast, but the structure itself still looked like a pylon and a radio tower fucked and had one hell of an ugly baby. 

Who was in charge?  Bowser Fenton, maybe – still hadn’t tracked him down – but he wasn’t giving orders.  Nobody was giving orders. 

How did that even WORK?  How was anything working?  There was no chaos, or if there was it was the purposeful and planned kind.  Everyone knew exactly what they were doing.

Well, except me.  But I was good at improv, and a convincing liar.  All I had to do was follow a line. 

Which everyone refused to feed me.  Just the song.  The song, the song, the song. 

I’d shared my fictional account of the song a hundred times.  Never once seen a hint of disbelief.  These people were infants.  Naïve, born-again-yesterday hopefuls, thinking they were truly in at the ground floor of the Most Important Thing Ever. 

That was pretty much the only thing about them that made any sense at all. 

“The song swells!” sang the woman next to me. 

“The song swells,” I replied, but she wasn’t listening.  Instead, she was clambering down the side of the antenna, leaving only a trail of liquid from the open, pulsating glands dotting her exposed and muscled forearms. 

Suddenly, I had another question. 

***

I had no idea how I’d missed them until then.  They were EVERYWHERE. 

Old men with soft hands, glistening with eternal dew. 

Construction crew that were covered with more than just heavy perspiration. 

One of the guys serving lunch had a blue throat.  Just the throat.  Whenever he laughed – which he did often, they all did so damned often – it pulsed and jiggled. 

It was odourless, which didn’t surprise me but did unsettle me. 

I wasn’t a doctor, but I hadn’t heard of anything like this.  Some kind of mass poisoning?  I felt like an idiot for eating the food without even a cursory inspection, but I stayed up all night running basic checks on a smuggled dinner roll and found nothing.  No radiation, no obvious additives.  Whatever was doing this, either it was something really unusual or it wasn’t in the food.  Or both. 

Still stayed up too late worrying about it, which meant I was really in need of the breakfast I didn’t get when I opened my door and found about twenty happy faces waiting for me. 

“Hello, Agent Tabitha!” said Bowser Fenton.  “We’re just finishing up!  Want to see?”

***

He looked just like the photos, besides the blue, glandular skin.  Big shaggy beard, intense eyes hidden under massive eyebushes.  He looked a lot happier now, though.  The lines on his face weren’t built for the cheery grin he sported; the wrinkles made him look older. 

“We thought you would appreciate a familiar face for this,” he explained.  “Just understand, I’m not in charge around here.  None of us are.”
I had a good poker face. 

“Not like THAT, Tabitha,” he said, pulling a face.  “I assure you, someone is in charge.  Just not one of us.  Don’t you wonder how we found you out?”
“I fucked up.”
“No, no, goodness no.  But you haven’t heard the song.”
“I-”

“Please, no need to repeat yourself.  We know you hate it.  And don’t feel so guilty about feeling so relieved.  It sours the song, you know?”
“No.”
“Right, sorry.  I’m very clumsy with my words; most of our important work nowadays doesn’t use them.  Which is what I’m here to explain to you – our work, that is – and why you need to listen carefully, despite my muddling.  There needs to be a message, you see, and since you aren’t one of us you’re the ideal messenger.  A sort of unprophet.”

“Of what?  The song?”
“Oh no.  The song just told us how to do this.  Which we’re getting to.  Here we are!  Thank you for helping build it, by the way.”
The antenna had acquired a pronounced tilt in the past two days, like a skeletal Tower of Pisa.  Overnight a large and complicated cross between a clock and a radar dish had been attached to the pinnacle. 

“What does it do?”
“This,” said Bowser.  “The song swells!” he and everyone else cheered, and then there was a teething-achingly enormous SNAP and the entire thing toppled over into the lake with that particularly slow motion giant disasters have.

“There,” said Bowser.  “All done.”
I laughed, I admit.  Against all self-control and reason, I laughed.  I laughed despite my best efforts and Bowser and the others laughed too and that was when I felt it tunnel up from the dirt, through the soil, through the water, up to the top of my head and escape into the broader atmosphere. 

I didn’t scream, but it took effort. 

“I did warn you,” said Bowser sympathetically. 

“Is that the song?” I wrenched out.  It felt like my body was being used as a bass string. 

“No,” he said.  “Not quite.  Or at least, not the one we’ve been hearing.  This is a little bit bigger, and it’s not instructions.  Our song was to tell us how to make this.”
“What is it?”
“Orders.  To tell the world to be mended.  Breath, Tabitha.”
I breathed.  The air hissed in my lungs like angry cockroaches. 

“Can you feel it?  It’s changing.”  Bowser was watching me carefully, and for the very first time he wasn’t smiling.  He looked like the old man he was, probably in the middle of telling me some bad news about my fuse box.  “It’s all changing now.  It tried to warn us, but nobody was able to hear it until I fell.  And by then it was too late.  We’d already made quite a mess of the atmosphere.  But this?  There’s still time for this.  Tabitha, LISTEN.  Go to them.  Tell them not to touch this.  Tell them not to touch us.  We’ll do what we can to protect this while it’s working, but it’d be easier if we can expect nobody to try and wreck it in the first place.  Easier still if they can help.  Are you listening, Tabitha?  Tell them that.”
I nodded. 

“Tell them that.  You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said, and his face slid back into a sort of smile, but a distant one.  “Now you can go.  Louise’ll drive you out to where the bus usually stops.  Take some butter tarts.  And no, there’s nothing in them.  This-” and he rubbed his fingers over the soft, slipper surface of his face – “just happens when you work a bit too close and long with the stuff we put in the receiver.  It’s why we never put you too high up it, if that makes sense.”

The next bus rolled in an hour after Louise dropped me off. 

“I haven’t heard the song,” I told the head of the procession as we passed each other by.
“Yeah,” she said.  “We knew.”

***

I told them everything.  I’m not sure if we’re sending messages or missiles.  I’m not sure if the missiles will work.  I’m not sure what happens if they work. 

I’m not sure what Bowser Fenton found under the gravel pit. 

I’m not sure if it’ll make things better or worse. 

The armies drew up.  On the side of Very Evil stood ten million goblins, four million orcs, a million trolls, and ten thousand assorted wraiths spectres and general nuisances.  Almost all of them were heftily informed by racist stereotypes in what the author would avow to his grave was a meaningless coincidence. 

On the side of Incredibly Good were sixty nameless goons an (attractively yet not actually) injured protagonist and a gormless sidekick.

“Oh no oh dear oh gosh,” wailed the gormless sidekick, comically doing a little jig of dismay.  “We’re doomed and I’m very frightened because I’m here to express the audience’s less-than-flattering feelings towards themselves aw shuuuuucks.”
“Fear not, small, stupid creature, whom I lower myself to call ‘friend’ and thereby express humility (one of my many virtues),” extolled the protagonist.  His leg was bandaged but this functionally did not matter, and he would never suffer sepsis in a million years.  “Right is on our side.  We’re doomed, but only in a way that will never actually present consequences to us and only makes our cause sexier.  Chin up, you’ll see your pointlessly mundane home and marry a not unreasonably attractive spouse before the book’s done.  Look!  Already the enemy has begun their futile assault!  See how they swarm and gnash their teeth in a frenzy of despair.  We’ve got them right where we want them: two chapters from the epilogue.”

“Oh nooooo,” whined the gormless sidekick.  “I wish I could shit myself.”
“Bodily functions beyond bleeding are Not Allowed,” said the protagonist.  “Don’t be gross.  Now let’s nobly charge into battle!  Forget about my leg, it’s not important anymore and doesn’t exist.  FOR INEVITABLE VICTORY!”
“FOR HIS INEVITABLE VICTORY,” shouted the nameless goons, and they all sallied forth and the fury and passion of their writing was such that they each killed a hundred thousand enemies each before totally dying in an abstract and unspecified way that was undoubtedly very heroic yet completely unworthy of note, leaving only the protagonist and the gormless sidekick.

“Golly jeepers,” shrieked the gormless sidekick, tripping over a sword and accidentally murdering a troll eight hundred times their body weight, “I’m so relatably terrified and powerless!  This is definitely how someone who doesn’t know how to fight would acquit themselves,” they added, waving their sword frantically and spitting four goblins at once on it. 

“No fear!” shouted the protagonist heroically, somehow having the lungpower to enunciate clearly while fighting an arbitrarily large army all by himself.  He coughed lightly and a hundred orcs exploded into giblets.  “We’re all alone, but that just means our mandated triumph shall be all the sweeter in our mouths and our audience’s minds.  Gird your loins a little; I’m about to suffer a cliffhanger.  Aaaargh,” he said, as a single, cowardly, repulsive, verminous, wretched, pathetic, worthless, foul, awful, treacherous foe snuck up on him and unfairly and actually hit him, the cur. 

“Oh noooooo,” screamed the gormless sidekick.  “Now I’ve got no choice but to become arbitrarily competent for thirty seconds, a thing which I will foreverafter deny!  Rar!  Hurr!  Arr!” they snorted, and with a brief onflux of temporary drama butchered foes for a good five minutes straight without rest over the heroically swooning and prone form of the protagonist, whose helpless yet spirited defensive posture gutted a hundred thousand more. 

“I have excellent news,” said the protagonist, engaging in a futile duel against the wizard-emperor of all dead things with one hand and slapping away all his lieutenants, servants, and bodyguards with the other.  “We’re on the brink of defeat and death!”
“Criminy!” whinged the gormless sidekick. 

“Yes!  Our triumph is most definitely imminent now.  Watch as I seem to be in actual danger!  Look, look, his sword’s almost touching me!  It’s almost touching me!  Look how brave and stoic I am as it appears that I am almost overcome!  I bet you’d be pissing yourself if you were allowed to, wouldn’t you?”
“Yesssssssssssss,” hissed the gormless sidekick, legs frantically scissoring like fucking mantises. 

A giant and horrible sound smacked the eardrums of everyone present. 

“Ah, there’s our dues ex machina,” said the protagonist with satisfaction.  He sheathed his sword.  “Now we just have to watch!  Will they dissolve into vapour or crumble into stone and dust or simply run around like chickens with their heads cut off?  Who knows!  Who cares!  Men, execute them all.  From this day forwards only people that look like me – and by me, I mean the author – are permitted to exist.  Kill ‘em all and let the editors sort ‘em out!”

“Yes sir!” said the nameless goons, or maybe they didn’t.  Who cared about them, and if they were alive or dead or said anything or nothing at all? 

Anyway they killed every last member of the species opposing them or maybe they didn’t who the hell knows.  But the important thing was that they wiped them away as a threat. 

“I’m exultant, yet nobly concerned over the fate of my men,” said the protagonist, archly furrowing his brow but not in a way that didn’t make him look sexy.  “This means I get to wear the crown next chapter.  Gormless sidekick, I’d like you to be the token member of the crowd I pretend to defer to as a show of my good faith and kindness.”
“Aw shucks,” said the gormless sidekick.  “I was really hoping to just go on back to my quaint little hovel that reminds the author of the lower classes of his childhood, when people showed you a bit of respect.  I’m far too simple and stupid to ever want anything more.”
“And so it shall be,” the protagonist said, tousling their hair.  “Don’t worry: nothing is allowed to change from this point onwards.  There’s some mopping up and a coronation and so on, but there aren’t allowed to be any more problems ever again.  The right person’s in charge now, the evil monsters that pretended to be people who didn’t look like me (and who I assume our reader to be) are totally exterminated to the last child-who-doesn’t-actually-exist-to-avoid-the-implications, and the vague spectre of a monstrous tyrant who desires to control everyone is now dispersed, allowing the happy beaming sunshine world of a noble leader who wisely guides everyone into the future where everything is as he pleases to assert itself.  Now pucker up and kiss my ass.”
“Mmm!  Tastes like cherries, your highness.”
“That it does, gormless sidekick.  That it does.”

It was Eld Bartimas’s Day, High Prayer was six minutes away by the sun’s position, and the prayer book was nowhere to be found, no matter how many cupboards the priest ripped open and ransacked. 

And his goddamned cat wouldn’t stop complaining at him. 

“No no no not here damn double damn damn triple damn damn damn.”

“Mow.”
“Shut up.”
“Mowwwwww.”
“Maybe in the kitchen?  No no no I already checked there.”
“Mrrrrreeeaaah.”
“Shut up!  On top of the bookcase?  No, I can’t even reach there.”
“Aaankk.”
“Shut up shut up shut up!”
“Brreeeaaaow.”

The priest picked up the nearest object and spun to throw it at his cat, then saw that it was sitting on top of the prayer book. 

Well, the half of the prayer book it hadn’t torn out and eaten, from the ink stains on its face.

“You little bastard if you weren’t technically thirteen percent holiness by weight I would skin you so much right now.”
“Mow.”

He read High Prayer from memory, and if there were a few more portentous silences than usual nobody in the congregation caught on. 

***

Late August was scorching, blistering, soul-sweating weather, and that was when the church caught fire. 

It was a good time for it, if such a thing could exist.  It happened when nobody was present; it happened the day a torrential rainstorm finally broke the weeks-long desiccation of high summer; it happened when there was plenty of spare lumber and manpower available to repair and restore it; and best of all the priest hadn’t seen the cat since it happened. 

Not that he’d wish harm on any of the creator’s children, of course.  He just hoped the fuzzy jackass had been scared off and would live out the rest of his days in peace, very far away somewhere. 

Autumn’s footsteps were fast coming, and the reconstruction had been completed just in time.  The priest could still finish this last big warm cup of tea and smear the myrrh over the threshold before the equinox of the evening. 

Another sip, long and slow.  Oh lovely, mint.  Such a fine thing.  Funny how his heart was racing, though.  Pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat-THUD CLUNK. 

The priest put down his mug and hurried to the threshold.  There he found his cat, a toppled vessel of myrrh, four myrrh-coated cat feet, and a lot of complaining noises. 

“Fuck you,” he told the cat. 

“Mrrrrrow.”

It did not listen to him.  Then again it was at least thirty-three percent holiness by volume now, so perhaps it outranked him.  Not that he’d tell anyone about it. 

***

Fletcher was a big, big man.  Hope was a big, bigger woman. 

Their daughter, Charity, was somehow bigger than both of them despite being still daisy-fresh to the world.  It was times like this the priest was glad the baptismal font was extra sturdy. 

Everything was ready, and not a moment too soon – a glance at the window put the happy family almost at his doorstep.  He was glad he’d blessed an extra-large decanter; that baby was going to need it. 

“Mow.”
“Not now you little shit.”

The silence that followed was perhaps the most dreadful thing the priest had ever experienced in fifty years of life.  It was as if gravity had stopped working, or the sun had been switched off.  The cat DID NOT listen to him. 

Then there was a slight scraping sound. 

He turned around with the slow weight of a man who knew he was going to meet his own execution and met the eyes of the cat, who was perched on the edge of the font, one paw carefully touching the decanter of holy water, eyes round and full of nothing but total, perfect, perpetual innocence. 

“No.”
“Mow?”

“No, no, don’t do that.” 

“Mreeah.”

The priest began to sidle forward, hands extended, tongue clucking like a nervous chicken.  “No, no, you don’t want to do that.  You’re a good kitty.  Goooood kitty.”
“Mowwww.”

“Gooooood kitty.  Gooood miserable little bastard.  Goood DON’T DO THAT DON’T NO YOU LITTLE FUCKER-”

The door opened, the priest leaped, the cat slipped, the decanter spun around and did three flips in the air, and that was that. 

The priest turned around, soaked cat clutched in his arms, and met the eyes of Fletcher and Hope.  And Charity, who seemed very pleased by all of this. 

“Did you see that?”

They nodded.

“Are you CERTAIN you were witnesses to that?”
The parents nodded again, very slowly.  Charity gurgled happily. 

The priest sighed, the bone-deep, soul-weary breath of a man discovering atheism.  “Well, that’s that then,” he said. 

***

Saint Little Fucker the Fuzzy, Patron of Those Who Suffer Sociopaths was, to the church’s immense displeasure, very, very, very popular. 

The micro-island nation of Blip has only one dock.  It only needs one dock, and there isn’t much space for more anyways. 

Currently the dock is a little overstuffed.  A large, bulky chickenwire box is occupying most of it.  There is a man in it, and a woman leaning back against it, dangling her feet in the sea.  A second man is fishing nearby, poorly. 

There is no other land within two hundred miles.  But if someone were passing by – or if one of the gulls were uncommonly gifted with languages – this is what they’d hear:

“Hey, Claire?”
“Yep.”
“Let me out.”
“Nope.”
“Oh come on!  I’m the president!”
“Deposed president, Tom.”
“That was illegitimate action and unjustified.”
“The gull cage.”
“Oh, this?  It was for the gulls!  For making nests, where Tim’s cat couldn’t get at them.”
“You locked Tim in it until the gulls ate him.”
“THAT was a temporary punishment for insubordination that went horribly wrong due to an honest mistake.  How was I supposed to know the gulls would eat him?”
“You smothered him in fat from Paul’s deep fryer.”
“I didn’t want him to catch chill overnight.  Just ask Ben, I’m very concerned with the health of my subjects.  Right Ben?”
“Right what?”

“Don’t listen to him.”
“I was just saying to Claire that I’m very concerned with the health of my subjects.  Remember when you felt poorly and I gave you those pills that made you throw up?”

“Yes…” 

“Everyone said that was cruel, but you felt better afterwards, didn’t you?”
“Well, that IS true.”
“You were in a coma for three days and we had to nurse you back from the brink.”
“Oh, you’re exaggerating.  He was fine!  He was perfectly fine.”
“I don’t know Claire, are you sure you’re not being too harsh on him?”
“I’ve got the knife.”
“Woah jeez.”
“Yeah Claire, don’t be aggro on Ben.  He’s just raising alternative points of view.”
“Shut up.”

“Does he have to shut up?  He’s just-”

“Yes.  Literally everything he’s ever said or done has been awful.”
“Oh come on, really?  What about the wells?”
“Oil wells.  Which you dug all over the hills, ruining our one actual, drinkable water well.”

“All we needed was one successful oil well and we could’ve had bottled water flown in daily.  It was an honest gamble and we lost.  Sometimes that happens.”
“That seems legitimate.”
“Ben?  Shut up.”
“What, I’m just saying.”
“Alright.  Into the gull cage with you.”
“What?  Why?!”
“Sedition.  You love your terrible president so much, you can be caged with him.”
“No!”
“I’ve got the knife.”
“Alright, alright.  Fine.  Fine!”

“You can have that corner, Ben.”
“Thank you.”
“You chose a good time to get locked up, you know.  Here comes lunch!”
“Oh hey Paul!”
“Hi guys.  Wait, there’s two of them now?”
“Ben was seditious.”
“I saw him bathe just this morning.”
“Whatever.  You got the fat?”
“Well, I had it ready but then I thought…y’know, most people don’t actually LIKE pure fat.  So I made some onion rings instead.”
“Paul for fuck’s sake we weren’t going to feed Tom the fat.  We were going to coat him in it so the gulls ate him.”
“Woah, woah, woah!  Why?”
“It’s what he did to Tim!  Poetic justice, Jesus H. tapdancing Christ on a cracker don’t you know ANYTHING?”
“I know onion rings are a lot tastier than fat.”

“We don’t feed onion rings to the condemned.”
“What, no last meal?”

“No!”
“I didn’t sign up for this sort of behaviour.  It’s downright unethical.”
“He fed Tim to the gulls!

“Yeah but… I never really LIKED Tim.”
“Right, that’s it.  Into the cage.”
“Really?”
“I’ve got the knife.”
“Aw c’mon.”
“In.  Now.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”

“Welcome.  You can have that corner.”
“Eugh, it’s full.”
“Nah, it’s mostly decomposed by now.  Tim weathered fast.  Must’ve been that big storm we had last week, eh Ben?”
“Tell me about it.  Blew my roof off.”

“Which wouldn’t have happened if a certain someone hadn’t decreed all the trees be chopped down to build a gull cage.”

“Nobody asked you to butt in, Claire.”
“Yeah Claire!  I didn’t ask for you to butt in!”
“Good standing up for yourself, Ben.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re all hopeless.”

“Who’s hopeless?  Woah, Claire, what the fuck?”
“What?”
“Is EVERYONE in the gull cage?”
“No.  You and me are out here.”
“Hi Brianne!”
“Hi Ben.  Why are they all in the gull cage?”
“Sedition and treason.”
“Wasn’t that exactly why Tom had Tim fed to the gulls in the first place?”
“He made that shit up.  These guys are all on record.”
“I did NOT make that shit up!  Tim challenged my authority in public, and left me no other legal recourse!”
“He said drilling oil wells was stupid and you sentenced him to ‘a slow, lingering death.’”

“What else was I meant to do?”

“Anything at all!”
“Seriously Claire, why don’t you let these folks out?”
“They’re with Tom.”
“Let them out.”
“No.”
“I’ve got the knife.”
“No, I’ve got the – hey, when did you do that?”
“While you were screaming at Tom.  Into the cage.”
“Fuck you.”
“Into the cage.”
“You can have the last corner if you’d like.”
“Shut up, Ben.”

“Why does she get the corner that doesn’t have Tim all over it?”
“Because that’s the one the gulls left the rest of Tim in.”
“Tom, if you don’t stop talking I’m going to turn you into a smear that makes this corner look like a posh hotel.”

“Says who?   You don’t have the knifffffuuuuurghhacjkdhghhghurgh.”
“Woah!”
“Claire, what the hell?”
“I got hands.”
“Cllllrf.”
“Break it up!  Break it up in there!”
“Make me!”
“Hllk.”
“Ben, Paul, get her arms!”
“Ben?  I’ve got two hands.”
“Paul, get her arms!”

“No I’m good thanks.”

“Aaaaag.”
“Okay, break it up NOW or I’m coming in there to break it up myself.”
“Bllloo.”

“I WARNED you!  Drop him!  Now!  Now!  Okay, now!”
“Fine.”
“Hweeeeez.”

“Good.  Damn, you’re like toddlers fighting over the same toy.  Listen, we’re all in this together, and if you’d all been able to accept that earlier this cage never would’ve been built.”
“We’re all very in this together.” 

“Huh?”

“The door shut behind you.”

The island of Blip is currently uninhabited, but it’s got a long and full life ahead of it.  Someone will presumably come along and tidy things up. 

It was a hard sun. 

Flat like a rock table, bright like a banker’s smile, cold like a glacier. 

Charity had never seen a glacier, but she could sure use one right now.  Only a complete moron would travel under this burning torch of a sky, and lordy, lordy, lordy she had run the last six miles in a dead heat.  If it weren’t for her hat the light from above and the blaze underneath would have liquefied her skull.  As it was, her brain had merely boiled inside of it, like a softboiled egg. 

But time wasn’t on her side, so she had no choice. 

This?  This shit was what happened when you got involved with young people.  They got up too early, they had too many big plans, and then just when you thought you knew what they were thinking they did something damned foolhardy, like shooting you in the side in the town square and leaving you with an angry mob closing in fast. 

But hey!  Charity’d had a good feeling about her!  She had no style because she knew style was superfluous!  She had no manners because honesty was a blunt club that could smash through those, so why not wield it!  She had no compunctions about shooting first and not bothering with stupid questions!  She reminded her of herself at that age! 

And if that hadn’t been the big warning sign, Charity didn’t know what would be. 

Lordy, lordy, lordy, this sun, this bastard of a sun. 

She was almost there, she reckoned.  Not like she’d gotten a particularly great look at the map, but Charity had a photographic memory for money and a decent sense of the landscape and most importantly a keen understanding of how someone’s mind worked when it was drunk on cash. 

If SHE were a crazy-ass rapscallion of an officer who didn’t mind burying some surplus mint-fine-metal somewhere, then shooting his co-commander in the spine for it, then sneaking out to make a withdrawal every few months for boozing money, where would she have gone?

Somewhere easily accessible, because she wanted to get her booze on sooner rather than later.  So, through the valley, not through the hills. 

Somewhere easily visible, because when the thirst’s on who has the time to count out paces and remember unmarked stones.  So, at the big ol’ cactus patch. 

Somewhere not QUITE at the easily visible landmark, to make her feel like she was cunning and clever and not terribly, awfully predictable.  So in the big hollow behind it. 

“Hey,” said June. 

***

She still looked tall even at the bottom of the hollow, and there was barely any sweat on her.  Pretty good trick for someone who’d just finished prying a trunk of ingots out of the dirt.  One boot tapped thoughtfully on its lid, the other remained firmly rooted and carefully planted, which meant the gun pointed directly at Charity’s bad eye was rock-steady. 

She really wished she hadn’t told her about her bad eye. 

“Hey,” said Charity, because if you’re going to die and there’s only one person around to hear your last words they don’t matter all that much. 

“Should’ve figured you’d make it.  Metal plate under the shirt?”
“Yep.”
“Classic.”
The gun was still pointed at her bad eye, but it hadn’t killed her yet.  This seemed odd. 

“So.  Got a solution to this situation?”
What situation?
Oh.  Charity’s gun was out and pointed at June.  When the hell had she done that?  Forget her own head next. 

“Well, way I see it, there’s three ways this works out.”
“Go on.  I got time.”
Damned young people.  “One: we both try and shoot each other.  Probably both die, maybe one of us makes it out.”
“Seems likely.”
“Two: we agree to split it fair and square, we go our separate ways.  Half the cash, but that was the plan before you got all persnickety on me.”
“Seems unlikely.”
“Three: we agree to split it fair and square and only one of us tries to shoot the other.  They get everything and a good story.”
“Hmm.”

“Hmm.”

The sun really was awful. 

“June?”

“Yeah.”
“I can’t help but notice you’ve kept your gun and gaze aimed pretty square at my bad eye the whole time we’ve been stuck like this.”
“I know about it.  And it doesn’t have a metal plate on it.”
“Fair.  But it means you aren’t watching my good eye.”
June’s eyes weren’t good or bad.  June’s eyes weren’t anything.  Little chips of something much older than her or Charity or anything that had warm blood and a heart that beat more than twice per minute. 

But they narrowed just a little at that. 

“Speak up.”

“My good eye.  If you’ve got a bad eye, you’ve got a good eye.  It’s just how it is, right?  Everyone knows that.”

“You never mentioned it before.”
“I shouldn’t have mentioned my bad eye either.”
“Yep.”  The smile was big.  Was she getting happier?  Young people were crazy.  It was a million degrees outside and she was a finger-twitch and a sneeze from death or murder or both.

“Well, my good eye is on you, and it’s noticing something it likes that you won’t.”
“I like ‘em younger, sorry.”
“Smartass.  But not smart enough.”  Charity’s own smile was a lot smaller, but there was no strain in it.  Her whole face relaxed.  “I’m sorry, y’know.”

June’s little chips opened wide in the blazing sunlight, her muscles shifted, and she settled her foot just a little on the trunk, which sent it crashing right through the lid. 

It had been twenty years since Charity had aimed with her good eye, but she put out all six at once and trusted in volume. 

She knew what was in the trunk.  But she looked anyways.  Both eyes. 

Nothing but dust and June’s trapped boot. 

“Twenty years,” she said aloud.  Twenty years with a terrible thirst, a powerful paranoia, and a cloud of guilt all wrestling over the man’s soul.  The trunk had probably been empty for more than half a decade. 

Ah well.  Plenty more time to strike it big.  She wasn’t young; she was in no rush. 

The walk back was still godawful though.