Snow Over Utopia

by Rudolfo A. Serna

  In the purple light of the hall, hundreds of miles away over desert and wilderness in ancient underground laboratories, gray faced mutantoids watching his psychotic visions.

  The Baron’s body guards had been exterminated by mutantoid daggers that slashed their necks. Bombs exploded in the castle’s courtyard, collapsing the pillars of the Baron’s castle.

  The loud whirl of war machines leaving behind streaks of purple vapor.

  The Baron traveled beyond the crumbling castle walls, to an obsidian world—exploding stars reflecting above the Midnight Queen’s quarters.

  “The stars, her eyes …”

  In his delirium, the Baron could not hear the explosions or the hum of war machines, nor did he notice the mutantoid hit squad entering the room, drifting further and further into the Nighttime World. His make-up had been smeared away in the sweat and neglect of his true form, his mutated face showing the scars of deformity from all the radiation their race had been locked underground with, the inbreeding and dilution of the cells, until their cloning science improved.

  The assassins’ eyes were goggled, the young bodies were wrapped in black, rubberized material, gleaming in the last dim chamber that had been demolished. The assassins moved in with daggers drawn, surrounding the Baron at his desk.

  “You came to take me to the river with the queen’s barge …”

  The gray scarred faces of the mutantoid assassins stared down at the Baron from behind their goggles.

  “Are you taking me home?” The Baron said.

  The Baron glimpsed his jaundiced, bloodshot eyes reflecting off the dagger’s edge as it was lifted to his face.

  “Nighttime World—for the Juggernaut!” the Baron said as the first knife plunged into his chest, the second into his back, the third and fourth entering the head and torso. By custom and tradition, the mutantoids sliced off chunks of flesh, devouring some of their victim raw.

  All these visions were shared by the mutantoid continuum, as the cult of the Midnight Queen existed in the minds starving for new sensations after centuries in the dark, excited by what might happen next. Visions created by the Baron replayed on the screen, and the mutantoids in their cave dreamt the martyr’s dream.

  The winds picked at the gaps in the lumber, letting in the rain and dust, the revolution moved through town among the prostitutes and miners, the sounds of their discontent amplified and carried with the smoke from the stove pipes.

  Miner had shown them that they did not have to remain in the company’s servitude, but could set themselves free. The story of Miner’s revolution travelled through the brothels and mines, resentment to their enslavement. Management thought that they had been subdued by harsh conditioning, but labor’s desperation was released into a spontaneous plan, coordinated by their whispers growing louder.

  The human workforce struck hard and without warning, driving their picks into the heads of the mine bosses, while prostitutes slit the throats of the company personnel lying on top of them. The filthy sheets turned bloody, until finally, the only cleansing agent was fire.

  Company goons swung their blades and clubs, trying to destroy the hopes of those attempting escape. The management rewarding those that could keep the labor in place with extra rations.

  Humans conditioned for domestication.

  Lights of the catacombs dimmed. Snow on screens clouded the mutantoids thoughts until they were led to prayer by the purple-shrouded priests serving the new religion of the Midnight Queen, with the rectories set up in the deepest corners of the catacombs.

  Survivors of the revolution walked over the dead while the wood buildings burned. There would still be plenty of labor in the mines. Plenty of hands to grip the tools and pull the carts from the earth. But the humans would do it not as slaves, but as workers who were free.

  Ruins of the castle smoldered on the edge of the cliffs that overlooked the destroyed town. Laborers’ faces smeared with ash, walking among the war machines that had flown overhead, and the management in the streets bleeding out. The laborers made their way up the trail to the Baron’s castle, smeared with blood, cautiously approaching the demolished columns laying across the steps made of the marble hauled by labor.

  The Barons were trained to imitate those they had led. Gathering their information from the screens and the information transmitted. Thoughts gathered from the devices spread in the air and implanted in the bread, swallowed or breathed in, the tentacles latched on and fed off the thoughts of all those that had lived within the range of the mutantoid towers.

  On the day of liberation, at the broken doors of a smoldering entrance, thick white paste hid the gray-scarred mutantoid faces. Wide black-brimmed hats shaded their eyes. Their goggles and long, ebony coats hid the fact that they had been transformed into something other than human, and it would never be known that they survived off of human blood.

  “The Baron is dead,” said the mutantoid representative, whose vocal cords had been split to allow it to speak on its own. It had been trained in what to say to the laborers who entered the broken gates of the courtyard.

  “We are your friends,” the representative proclaimed. “Go forth, take your revenge, destroy the bodies of your enemies.”

  Labor did not understand what it meant when the representative encouraged them to eat the carcasses of their dead rulers. Labor did not participate in such rituals. Instead, the laborers stared at the fly-covered bodies of the Baron’s court and kicked at them as they passed over on their way to the Baron’s kitchen to raid the pantry.

  The representative raised a hand, expecting them to fall upon the feast of dead courtesans rotting in the sun, but then realized that the laborers had not been conditioned to murder and eat one another, that the laborers had killed out of fury and desperation, not out of hunger or ritual.

  “We have come to help liberate you from your awful conditions, and to work with you in creating a better civilization,” the representative declared over the gathering crowd, speaking words they had never heard, knowing only the commands and lashings of their comptrollers.

  The miners and prostitutes had never seen the mutantoid race before, never heard such words.

  Injured laborers on the trail to the smoldering ruins of the Baron’s palace: some slumped over and cried, others walked steadfast past the mutantoid hovercrafts lined with chrome and black metal, the ebony-clad strangers with their thick black goggles.

  The laborers recognized their liberators’ superiority, and the power of the war machines that hummed in the rubble of the palace. Slowly, the laborers stepped forward, looking first at the bodies in the smoke and then up the stairs at the long gangly figures wrapped in black, a thick, white paste hiding the deformities that would reveal them as non-human.

  The victorious laborers marveled at the war machines that stood like armored saints at the gates of a new kingdom.

  “A demon’s chariot, Midnight Queen,” a miner muttered.

  “From the Nighttime World. They could help us,” a prostitute said.

  “We will rebuild!” the representative said. “We will give you freedom! The tyranny of the Baron is over! We are here to help you!”

  The laborers, suffering from their wounds, unable to completely shake off their conditioning, and confused by what they saw.

  “Are they servants of the Midnight Queen?” the laborers whispered.

  “We will continue to mine the ore, to build a world where all of you are equal!” the representative said.

  The Baron was truly dead, his head held up for everyone to see.

  Not knowing what to do, and already missing their masters’ directions, the laborers gathered around the mutantoid operatives. But these operatives had already designed new ways to control the laborers by deploying other technologies into the water wells, broadcasting nebulous messages of obedience, reconstituting derivatives of purple and yellow plants far more potent than anything before.

  Labor would be spared annihilation, allowed to worship thei
r religion, even as management became more efficient in controlling the means of production.

  “We are like you, faithful followers of the Midnight Queen. The Baron lost his way. We are here to show you a better way to live!” The representative proclaimed.

  Even as the rep for the mutantoid continuum held the Baron’s head, even as it pronounced the slogan of allegiance, “For the Juggernaut!” the representative began to have aspirations of rebuilding the palace walls, and reprising the Baron’s role for itself—further breaking its connection to the mutantoid continuum. Believing in the Baron’s creation myth. The thoughts being processed, running over and over again, a rerun of psychic dreams seeping into the continuum from the Baron’s half-eaten body.

  “For the Juggernaut!” the representative called out as he raised his arm higher, holding the head of the Baron for all of labor to see, while labor cheered him on.

  The Baron’s thoughts are dangerous.

  There are other thoughts besides the Baron’s.

  What about us?

  End transmission, infection imminent.

  Cannot. It is too late.

  Six

  The strong-winged blackbirds that picked at the stag’s carcass scattered when the miner approached with a knife.

  The hide and ivory of the dead animal had sunk into the ground, and the birds had driven their beaks like miners’ picks, following the rich promise of what lay past the thick skin and ribcage, to carry away whatever meat they could.

  Reaching down, the miner smelled the sweetness of what remained of the animal. He did not exactly know what to do with the foul carcass, but hunger kept him fumbling with the blade.

  He was unskilled in the art of butchery.

  His only experience had been in slashing the prostitute’s throat, and smashing the mine personnel’s heads in with a pick-axe. But, he wouldn’t be as skilled as the deputies in removing body parts. The flesh of the animal was more difficult to cut, requiring him to jab through the hide, into the bone joints of the leg, pulling and twisting, slicing at the white tendons that kept the leg attached.

  Miner made a final tug to cut the meat loose, lifting it to his shoulders just as he had done with the body of the prostitute, the blood running down his back making a trail into the basement, into the well where blood dripped into waiting lips.

  The prostitute’s body had not been so heavy when he’d carried it down the creaking stairs past sleeping laborers inhaling smoke from the skull-faced furnace, having drunk the numbing yellow liquid that ran through whiskey stills rigged by cult priest tending the flames, boiling the fetid mash.

  Miner had walked past those who slept in halls and on saloon floors and slipped into the basement, where the smell of rotting flesh wafted from the hole in the center of the cellar’s dirt floor. The smell emanated from other bodies that had been unceremoniously dumped down the well that already overflowed with the dead who sought relief from their toils. The sacrifice was to guarantee passage to the Nighttime World. In near total darkness, Miner smelled the rot as he crept closer to the hole, the smell growing strongest at its rim. He dropped the prostitute’s body from his shoulders; it quietly slipped into the mouth that had been regularly fed since before the company town was built. A stench belched forth as if the hole was satiated with Miner’s offering.

  Miner stared into the hole, listening to the scratching on the rock, expecting a miracle that he thought would never come, just as every other desperate human wish and prayer went unanswered through the age of the green sky, and before that, the first war, then the second, and the one after that. And then finally, his sacrifice to the Midnight Queen went answered, and he was free.

  Already the blood on the carcass of the dead animal had dried. Hungry snouts had already burrowed through the animal’s belly, rooting out the organs. Wild storms had battered the forest, filling the gully with fallen tree trunks.

  When Miner got closer, Eden began to hear his footsteps on the branches and pine needles.

  Miner had been conditioned to carry the heavy weight of iron tools and bags of ore, but eventually, hunger and thirst caused him to stumble. He steadied himself, balancing the rotting leg over his shoulder like the cross member of a cruciform or a timber hauled underground to shore up a tunnel.

  He continued staggering towards her, sweat falling in his eyes, he spotted her up ahead, still gripping the jar, the ends of her bandages drifting in a breeze across her face.

  Clouds moved over the peaks.

  The hot season was passing, and soon it would be cold again.

  The cold making its way from the northern pole. They would have to build a fire. But the fear of the posse kept them from striking together the stones that the old woman had given them during their escape.

  They had resisted making a fire for fear of the drifting smoke. They had been given a firestone to strike and make spark.

  To make fire was a skill kept from labor, controlled by the company for itself. Only the fire starters could carry flames to the iron stoves or ignite the oil lamps. Only the company had the power to give warmth light, and violators were dangled from cruciforms.

  He placed the meat at Eden’s feet.

  “It smells,” she said.

  “It is old.”

  “It should be cooked,” Eden said, remembering the cooked food that the old woman served to her on the table in front of the shack.

  “This way,” Miner said. Looking in the distance, he saw the scattered boulders above them in the hills, thinking that perhaps behind the rocks there would be some cover and a place from which to watch the posse’s approach should they come.

  Miner struggled up the hill, Eden following, holding on to the canvas material of Miner’s shirt, driving her feet into the dirt, pushing upward toward the boulders.

  Miner carried the ragged, hide-covered leg that reeked of rot.

  “Is it safe here?” Eden asked, catching her breath.

  “I don’t know,” Miner said, looking around, his chest burning.

  Eden kept up with him, feeling the steep slope underneath her, while reaching out with her other hand, trying to feel for anything that might help her over the rough ground.

  “Can we stop?” Eden asked.

  Miner looked back through the forest, trying to determine if they were safe, uncertain whether they could escape if attacked.

  “Yes, I think it is safe,” Miner finally said, hoping that there would be cover in the rocks looming next to them.

  Stars started to appear over the edge of the plateau.

  Miner saw the deep cracks in the planet, cutting the land, winding and connecting gullies and canyons. He saw a long labyrinth engorged by rains, a restless crow demanding explanation of their presence, Eden’s lips cracked, gone dry after sipping the last of their water the morning before.

  Small juniper trees dotted the fractured surface of the plateau, thinning out in the distance where the sun dropped.

  Head towards where the sun falls, the old woman had said.

  Dusk got colder, and the meat they found was spoiled. They needed the fire to keep warm and to burn the rot. For the first time, they felt that they had gotten away. Desperate to feel safe, so they could rest and eat, wanting to reach Utopia as they came to the end of the world.

  Eden rummaged in the satchel until she felt the stones fall into her hand. It is here, the old woman had said as she handed Eden the satchel. You can live with these stones. They light, it burns. If struck, Eden understood, the stones would ignite.

  She felt the folds of a blanket, biscuit crumbs, the glass jar that held the eyes as she pulled out the stones.

  “Here,” Eden said.

  Miner took the stones from her hand.

  Eden knelt down, feeling the ground for dried sticks and grass.

  “Hit them together,” Eden said.

  He saw nothing at first, struck them together harder until they sparked like a pick glancing off ore.

  “It lights, it burns,” Eden mut
tered.

  Miner continued striking the stones until sparks fanned out across the dried grass and sticks. Eden could not see the smile on Miner’s face when the smoke started to build. She could hear the dead grass crackling as it burnt, smell the smoke drifting past until she felt the heat growing across her cheek.

  The children of the conditioning camps had tilled the gardens in the courtyard.

  The bounty they tended through the growing season was harvested into tins, boiled and mashed and served without spices, condensed and canned, delivered to the company store.

  Miner prepared the leg, skinning it clean of rot, trying to find parts that could be eaten. He put thin strips of meat over the flame. The flesh started to sizzle.

  In the camp, they were watched over by attendants with clubs, not allowed to eat the food they had picked. Production of humans belonged to the mutantoids. Fetuses in bags of amniotic fluid, birthed under the purple lights of nurseries, tended to by gray faced nurses in black rubbery gowns. Children who would be conditioned to take nourishment from mechanized teats, march at the tone of somber bells, who would be fed and trained to labor in the company town, mining green ore to power the furnaces.

  Eden remembered the long green stalks crowned with yellow fruit. Remembered the seeds carried in clay vessels to the courtyard where cult priests placed the seed into soil freshly tilled by the children. Seed that had been locked in store rooms. And if that seed fell into the wrong hands, those hands would be cut from the offender, for that stolen seed would sprout rebellion.

  Eden wondered if she could find any of those seeds now, to watch them grow, those long stalks. The yellow fruit could feed them through winter. She wondered if her eyes would suffice in place of the seed. Could I dig a hole, take the eyes, place them in dirt? They could feed them forever in seasons of darkness, which was her fate unless she could be healed by Utopian science. Transmissions she had received while rocking in the chair beneath the Juggernaut tree, cradling her eyes in their jar, among visions of the first being, so powerful, its meteoritic heart burned in its chest, heaving powerful limbs, holding up the ground beneath Utopia.