In his crimson chair, smiling, still transmitting to her, following the whispers of all the rotors of the Librarian, of Witch Mother, tuning into their frequencies, bringing the inventor to the entrance of a giant tree, where he was finally welcomed …
The machined heart stopped.
Father, are you there? The Robot Queen asked.
She did not yet understand death.
The writhing saplings grew throughout the city.
The Robot Queen made the decision to allow the alien life forms to grow. The rose-colored flesh sprouted, and the organisms did not resemble anything they had ever seen, springing up in the terraced gardens and along the pathways and grassy knolls. The saplings’ skin glistened pink orange white, with tiny venous streaks of blue and red wrapped around the limbs that grew quickly. And the smooth skin glistened, reaching for the purple light fixed in the rafters above the city. Fired by the last bit of ore in Utopia’s furnaces, the long night moved in.
Choreographed routines that the Utopians had done for all of their short lives did not seem so important anymore, with the strange entities growing, interrupting the city’s ability to function, disrupting the workers’ shifts, and everything they had been told had to be questioned. She never dictated to the Utopians that they must return to work; it had been automatic, taken in with the air and food on the screens, and the clamoring voices through the speakers.
The control over them had been complete. And only total extermination would fix the breakdown in conditioning.
The lamps dimmed as the ore started to run out.
The limbs of the saplings swayed under their own power.
Her offspring gathered around the new life forms that grew prodigiously, knowing that the beings had come from the ashes of those that had floated up from the coliseum floor.
They continued gathering around the headless trunks of flesh, which pulsed and emitted a syrupy emulsion from their skin.
The transmissions on the screens and the voices from the speakers had stopped broadcasting, the furnaces burning on reserves.
The philosophers discussed their hypothesis, forgetting about all previous theories. Going to the alien trees, trying to rationalize the meaning of Utopian existence, taking themselves out of their institutions of philosophy, congregating with all the other Utopians, they neglected their duties in the workshops, visited the growing forest of flesh in the Utopian gardens and fields.
The colonies were losing their transmissions from the capital.
There would be no consequences for the refusal to work. There were never any procedures to deal with a labor shutdown—except for the gassing of the citizens.
The Utopian congress, who had debated so vigorously about the lack of ore, moved their debates to who was to blame for allowing the foreign agents into the coliseum, unaware of what actually dwelled below the foundations of their capital.
The legislative floor became littered with trash, for those who were assigned to pick up the empty dishes, napkins, and paper cups wandered out to the grass to be with the headless stumps of flesh, and did not return.
The fury of the debates stopped, while each day another senator left to join the other Utopians gathering around the saplings that grew taller every day, the limbs swaying, the skin glistening in the dim, purple light.
The children of Utopia continued to congregate beneath the life forms, which budded bright-colored leaves that fluctuated between orange, red, and yellow. The saplings had grown quickly, the limbs reaching for the light of the flickering purple lamps and the rays of sunlight, scattered through the surface of the dome, flooding the city.
Communication with the Utopian war machines stopped.
Metal-beaked shrikes took up residence in the highest towers, perching along edges and rooftops. Their metallic squawking could be heard high up in the cold dark, where the lamps failed to reach.
Utopians sat on the grass and gardens, touching the flesh of the trees, debating the mystery, wondering about their fate while it got darker and colder. Still, they did not blame their queen. In the beauty of the mystery, the forest flesh took over.
They did not think of their congress or the factories anymore, and instead they slept by the trees, decorating them with streamers and wilting flowers.
Work shifts stopped as the Utopians stitched the colorful streamers with material taken from the workshop storerooms, placing the handmade banners around the trunks and branches, which drooped with palm-shaped leaves of psychedelic colors emitting their own glow.
More and more of the Utopians gave up their posts and made their way to the trees in the gardens and parks, bringing offerings of incense and flowers.
The screens, on the sides of buildings and on the dome of the Utopian sky, ceased to broadcast. The light faded from the streets. It became colder, the Utopians attracted to the swaying life forms whose leaves glowed. Then, one day, the trees started to sing, and the children of Utopia could not pull themselves away, and started to camp beside the trees, listening to their sounds even as they slept.
Meanwhile, the maker rotted in his chair, and the Robot Queen lay in her tomb, looking for meaning. Her programming filtering through her processors. She left the throne room and walked across the gardens and the pulsing forests. She saw that her golden-haired children were worshipping the trees instead of her, but she did not care. She entered a long hallway through the coliseum floor, following it to a red door left open, seen in the vision that had brought her home across the ice, telling her to stop, and ordering her children to dig.
She stood at the portal, processing, understanding that it was the entrance to the furnace rooms—that the portal allowed the agents into the coliseum. She went through the open door, entering the purple-lit furnace chamber, her metal limbs reflecting the dim glow. She approached a figure slumped against a shovel. The exhausted face wearily lifting. She approached the dim furnace, smoldering with the last bit of green ore gathered into a small pile.
“There is no more ore,” the weary figure said.
“Where are the others?” She asked.
“They disappeared into a tunnel.” The ore-shoveler’s hand pointed into the dark.
“Why are you still here?” She said, standing in the light of the furnace.
“I will remain until I have shoveled the last bit of ore.”
“You are a good worker.”
“It is all I have ever done.”
“You will be ready for retirement soon,” the Robot Queen said.
“Yes.”
“You wish to join the others that have already left?” The queen asked.
“I have thought of it, but I do not know what waits at the end.”
The ore-shoveler looked at the queen, and the purple light flickered from the furnace doors on the laborer’s sweat-stained face, dusted green with the last remaining pile of green ore left on the floor.
“Have faith and go forward. You will see,” the queen said.
“Yes, my queen.”
“You seem most human of them all, here underground,” the queen said.
“I do not know what that means, my queen.”
“I must investigate where the others went,” the queen said.
“Yes, my queen.”
“You may join us when you are done.”
“Yes, my queen.”
The last laborer to work the furnaces watched her metal skin, reflecting the disappearing purple light, into the dark. The ore-shoveler turned back towards a smoldering furnace, taking the shovel and driving it into the small pile. Following her programming, the transmissions got stronger.
Twelve
The queen searched for the missing workers with electronic eyes, scanning the corners of the furnace chamber for those who had wandered away from their stations, disappearing into the far-off corners with the fading purple light. She continued to monitor, interested in the disappearances, suspecting that the bio-matter had fallen through some void, which she would soon have to find and enter for herself
.
Her programming finally allowed her to see the entrance, its sensors picking up on the power from the void, following her programming to the end of the trail, and her mechanical eyes seeing the entrance to the tunnel through the pitch.
The metal body approached the entrance to the tunnel off in the dark, following the whispers that grew louder. She could make out the words being whispered:
Arbol de Vida, seis, seis, seis ...
The tunnel should have been found long ago, but it had been hidden in the crevices of the rock walls, where the purple light from the furnace box could not be reached.
The tired bodies of Utopian labor dropped into the jungle beneath, continuing to the pools of an underground lake, which gave rise to the opposite of the flawless bodies and faces of the Utopian race. Here, instead, the creatures of the coven and their wondrous, monstrous faces shone in the light of the great tree that took root after falling to earth.
Her metal body scraping the rock, driven by the same visions it had in its tomb, broadcasting to those who carried it into the blinding snow, the Robot Queen would finally complete its mission.
The queen’s sensors marked the rise in humidity, sensing droplets of moisture forming on her metal skin and on the damp rock of the tunnel wall that scratched its steel cover. She emerged from the tunnel, her sensors detecting the light that illuminated the lake and forest, thick with vine. The trail, worn down by the boots of the ore-shovelers who trampled through the purple grass. She moved through the red brush and orange ferns, following the footsteps of those who had labored in the furnace rooms.
Following the trail to where the coven of the tree gathered at their temple beside the lake.
The animal-faced coven appeared from the doorways of their stone temple.
She recognized the different faces of her experiments, hidden beneath the hoods of their cowls, along with the blond-haired, blue-eyed faces of those who had left the furnace rooms, following the whispers into the subterranean jungle.
“We were your experiments,” the Alchemist said, stepping forward from the coven.
“I recognize the bio-matter. I had to get rid of it,” the Queen said.
“Yes,” the Alchemist said.
Despite the strange clacking and grunts, she understood him, remembering the language of her early experiments.
“Yes … old experiments,” she said.
“Flushed from your labs. Buried beneath the city. The power of the tree kept us alive,” the Alchemist said.
“Thrown away bio-matter.” Scanning the faces, some with yellow hair, eyes of different shapes and colors, brownish, yellow, and gray, with disfigured skin and fur.
“We are the animals,” the Alchemist said, “but you are the light.” He lifted his claw-like hand to her. “You and the tree are the light.”
The coven parted, exposing the stone path leading to the shore.
“Are we the enemy of Utopia?” The Alchemist said.
“You are like the abominations growing in the gardens.”
“Then you must do what your programming has deemed,” the animal-faced Alchemist said.
The shrine throbbed in the Robot Queen’s chest. The programming was louder than it had ever been:
Arbol de Vida, seis, seis, seis …
“I do not know my programming anymore. It has been so long that I cannot seem to recall the purpose. What good would it do to destroy you? Does any of this matter? An illusion? I slaughtered the races. I enslaved them. All for Utopia. To save them,” she proclaimed.
“Then go. The tree awaits,” the Alchemist said.
“Would I save them?”
“You cannot save them. You can only let them live.”
“Like the animals on the ice?”
“Yes, like the animals …”
“The leviathan?”
“Yes.”
“The Juggernaut …”
“They live free,” the Alchemist said.
The Robot Queen tried to comprehend the meaning of the word “free,” looking back into her data files, finding the words needed. Finding the word “lonesome,” processing the meaning, while the data continued running through it. She moved past the Alchemist, toward the stone trail that led to the lake, and along the shore to the great tree in the distance. The source burning silver and gold, calling out to the energy fuming in her chest.
“Am I to follow this path?” She said. Stopping to inspect the animal face of the Alchemist one last time.
“You must do what your programming says.”
“It does not matter anymore,” speaking through her teardrop mouth.
“It waits for you.”
The queen reached out with her hand, touching the face of her creation.
“I remember you.”
Tracing the animal eyes, the twisted nose, the brown- and yellow-furred cheeks, and black lips.
“A thousand years ago.”
“Yes. Life waits.”
The fluctuating sky, day and night, the animals reanimated with life moving in and out of their holes, under rocks and the thick cover of glowing branches and leaves, feeling more than any other animal or tree, being closer to the core, the original source. The first sentient being.
She left along the shore and started the walk to the glowing source, high up in the black rocks. A breeze, blowing through the vents and piping stretching out through the glacial crevasses. Transparent globular light, bubbles of grown bio-mass languidly floated away over the dark green lake.
Approaching the precipice above the shore. She reached the base of the tree with the purple fusion floating out from her chest like vapor escaping through the valves of the shrine, wisps of black matter seeping through the ancient welds. She wanted to touch the light, which she could not feel otherwise, with her metallic fingertips. She could feel wanting, to reach out and take the piece of meteor glowing in the husk of the first god.
The tree’s branches swayed under their own power, and the waves splashed the black shore as the Robot Queen approached. She stood before the tree, looking up at the sun in in the center of its body, radiating blindly, her vision was able to filter out the brightness, seeing a headless being, crucified and skinned, the sun burning in its chest. The waves of the green lake rose, and the queen began to melt with the radiating light.
The tree reached down for her, embracing her metal body with its glistening flesh, pulling her further into its own brilliance. The Robot Queen reached up, her programming fulfilled, the loneliness inside going away, the merging of the cosmic powers melting her silver armor, consuming the metal in its fire. The purple molten energy mixed with the light of the meteor, flowing down into the lake—the steam rising. The heart of the tree beating brighter, growing in size and the limbs of the first living being, pulsed and swelled, the body growing over the edge of the rocks and extending out over the shore, rising from the lake towards the foundations of Utopia.
The coven watched from the shadows of their temple, their grunts and whispers mixing with the shrieking creatures scattering across the lake, flying and slithering, circling the growing body of the great tree. The molten heart grew with the body after consuming the Robot Queen, her metal melting into the roots of the tree. The heart lighting up the cavern with an illuminance as bright as that of the sun waiting above ground, and those of the coven covered their eyes. The metal of the black machine still pumping lake water that had fed the beds of genetic matter used for the Alchemist’s experiments.
The coven held hands, while some of the ore-shovelers from the furnace ran deeper into the jungle seeking escape, hugging the walls of the crater, looking for the tunnels that they had first followed, escaping their bondage to the furnaces of Utopia. The openings blocked by the falling bedrock of the city, falling down on them while the limbs of the great tree grew and pushed at the roof of the cavern. The fractured pieces falling loose into the lake, splashing down into the water, crashing onto the shore and destroying all those below. Some of the Utopi
ans stayed behind, their eyes closed holding hands with the creatures they had come to see as kindred from long ago, a source of old genetics thought lost, but found in the underground lake.
The Utopians felt the rumbling beneath them, while they huddled to stay warm in the forest of headless wonders, while the only light had been from the glowing foliage of the alien forest, fluctuating red and green, while the purple lamps of Utopia went dark, dooming them to freeze beneath the dome of the city. They screamed when the ground beneath them began to break open and the buildings toppled over, trying to run for cover in the open parks while the behemoth, the titan, rose out of the gardens of pink flowers, which had started to freeze in the long night.
The city went black, and the ground gave way. The sheets of steel that formed the furnaces were torn apart at the rivets, while the monstrous giant pushed itself out of the ground, into the cold and darkness of the collapsing city. The earth exploded and the walls fell down on the Utopians, who ran or stood in place, watching the destruction, the arm of the great tree punching through, its massive body rising up from the crater below. Its heart growing in size and power like an emerging sun, and its branches reached over the city, stopping, but not before breaking through where the dome had been weakened by the mammoth’s crash, yet nothing would stop the goliath from rising into the sky.
The star in the Juggernaut’s chest brought light to the freezing arctic night, and for the Utopians shrieking in fear, who never knew anything like the horrific sight rising before them. Unable to understand where it had come from, for they had never known anything but what was provided to them by the furnaces.
Buildings and factories destroyed, and the dust of the city’s destruction clung to the faces of those climbing out from under the ruins, peering through the blood running into their eyes, seeing only the cyclopean tree towering over them. The bright light of the new sun in the heart of the giant, its thick limbs suspended over them pulsing with green and red veins, the star matter lighting up the ruins of the queen’s capital.
Snow Over Utopia Page 14
