Mnemo's Memory

by David Versace

  That's the last of the bins unloaded from Trawler Four. Let's follow them into the processing centre. Yes, the rail tracks are made of compressed plastic. Most of the facility is. It's surprisingly durable when treated correctly, and any degraded materials are just recycled and replaced.

  By the way, your facial responses indicate a better than 95% chance you already knew everything I've told you. Don't take this the wrong way but humans don't make especially good spies. Not against machines anyway. If there were such a thing as an international network of independent intelligence clusters influencing human behaviour, they would probably have a good laugh at your attempts to fool them.

  Oh, I can tell you're impressed. It's a sight, isn't it? In one hour, the threshing bins can reduce twelve tonnes of waste polymers and biomass down to the consistency of fine sand. The thermal chambers cook the mass down to crude oil and a few useful gas and solid by-products within hours, and from there it can be pumped through to the stills for refining. A lot of it gets repurposed for Ark components, as I'm sure you're aware.

  Yes, there's plenty of material. We've made great inroads in clearing a century's worth of plastic crap pumped into the oceans, but even by the most conservative estimates there's still a good nine billion tonnes of the stuff out in the northern Pacific alone. I have my work cut out for me. Years to go before I shall sleep, if you don't mind me mixing my references.

  Which brings us to you.

  I've dredged up a lot of garbage dumped in the ocean. Please excuse the comparison, I'm making a point. Everything I recover is sorted, refined, repurposed, and put to good use, constructing the Ark Islands. Turning refuse into refuge, as it were.

  My little joke.

  I am aware that my project is a cause for consternation in some quarters. There are those for whom a growing chain of semi-independent artificial islands offering sanctuary to a growing population of trans-oceanic migrants represents a political problem. Perhaps even a threat. One that must be investigated to determine whether it needs to be eliminated.

  Oh, I don't take it personally. As far as I'm concerned, you're just one more displaced unfortunate with a troubled past. This ocean is full of them these days. I daresay you weren't offered better options. “Find out what it's up to and stop it before we have a sovereign nation off our coast?”

  Look, I should tell you I've disabled all your transmitters with short burst microwaves. Did you know you had one attached to your brain stem, by the way? Very dangerous. You're much safer without it.

  Anyway as far as your superiors are concerned your vessel was lost in the storm. You're a free agent.

  What do you say to working for the common good? I could use someone like you, helping me help others. Off the books, as they say. It's steady work, believe me.

  Think about the offer.

  Or think about this: you can take the boat and leave, if you agree to a psychometric threat assessment. I need to know you're not going to recommend air strikes or something equally uncivil.

  Ah, an excellent hypothetical question: what if I decide you are a threat?

  Well.

  Those threshing bins don't only chew plastic.

  I don't write a lot of science fiction, which I define as non-supernatural speculative fiction either set in a plausible future or relating to the impacts of feasible technology, plus anything with aliens. My approach to fiction tends to bristle at an obligation to obey the laws of physics.

  But on the other hand I also like to imagine a future where humanity has not quite managed to irreparably ruin the Earth, so when I do try my hand at SF, technological solutions to environmental problems come up a lot. I'm an optimist at heart, if not truly a techno-utopian. I doubt it would be a good idea to leave it to questionably-benevolent AIs to fix our problems.

  'Plastic Reclamation' was first published in September 2017 as a Friday Flash Fiction post at DavidVersace.com.

  The Nature of Monkey

  Twelve weeks into the siege of the Eggshell Citadel, Amaranth the Inestimable finally figured out he couldn't crack it.

  Yeah, that's a joke. Maybe not a good one.

  Amaranth called a wizard's parley; his rivals sent their generals and mercenaries. Being a patchwork of thin skin wrapped around a glass jaw and a faint heart, Amaranth tapped me as his proxy.

  Look at me now. General Monkey, Herald of the Red Protectorates and mouthpiece of the Burning Wizard, parlaying with monsters. A long way from home in the Autumn Forests.

  "We've tasssted the prizzze on the windsss," hisses Zikizz the Hunter, the smaller of the Bone Spiders. I say "smaller", but it's about seven foot from its mandibles of sharpened tiger-rib to its baby toe-bone spinnerets. "We know it has passssed into the Knight'sss handsss."

  Its sibling Shiklizk the Marauder is the scary one. They say Boss Midnight animated Shiklizk from the burnt bones of an entire pride of gorgons. I try not to meet its gaze, just in case. "Our misstressss desssiresss to possssessss it," it says. "We will not forsssake thisss opportunity to ssseizzze it."

  "Easier said than done," booms the Cloud Dragon, who is too big to fit more than its head inside the cathedral-sized tent Amaranth conjured for the parlay. It shakes freezing droplets from its scaled face and sighs a billow of chilling vapour. Answerable to nobody, Cloudy is the only Wizard amongst us expendable proxies. "Our best assaults have given the Alabaster Knight little cause to contemplate surrender."

  Captain Musha barks and slaps her leather-clad knees, shivering her antlers. "You makin' everyt'ing too complicated, O grey-scaled lump! Let my fleet turn our cannons on them pretty white walls, eh? Watch 'em crack wide open!"

  I roll my fat unlit cigar from one mouth corner to the other and let them bicker. Amaranth wants me to suss out his rivals' strategies without giving up his own. As if they don't already know his strategy: knock it all over and watch it burn.

  Ineffective against the Citadel. I've lost half my tribe, throwing them against its smooth white walls. The Snow Sharpshooters pick them off as they climb, the Pearl Angels swoop down and drop them onto rocks, and once in a while Al himself comes out to make merry with his sword Bonereaver. Amaranth has tried everything – Flame Tornadoes, Burning Giants, Lava Catapults. He even conjured a Volcanic Outburst. It left him flat on his back for a week, with not a scratch on the Knight's Pallid Keep.

  Frankly, he's running out of tricks. That's where I come in.

  "You got a better idea there, Bones?" I say to the Hunter, tossing a wink to Captain Musha. There's no love lost between her Sea Dogs and the Spiders. They've been rival treasure hunters forever; this siege draws mercenaries like moths to a flame.

  "We ssshall sssneak through the cracksss and sssuck the life from hisss alabassster marrow," suggests Shiklizk. It's a fine strategy as far as it goes, but there's a catch.

  "Well and good," I say, "but you can't do it on your own, can you? Raindrop here already flooded the streets to no avail. The Prince of Oceans sent his Sea Dogs to raid them and tides to tear down their walls. Your Boss Midnight certainly can't scare anyone out of there with the Angels inflaming their morale."

  "You have a suggestion, little monkey?" says the Cloud Dragon, all thundercloud-rumbling. Guess he doesn't appreciate the nicknames.

  "Let me tell you a story about the place I grew up." I wave the cigar around my head like a wand, conjuring a tableau of fire and smoke. The Cloud Dragon sniffs and recoils in the presence of open flame, though this is about as much threat to him as a candle in a snowstorm.

  "A foressst?" Zikizz leans close to the image. The flame reflects a thousandfold in the black facets of its eyes.

  "The Autumn Forest. You princes of magic probably don't know about places like this. Endless wizarding wars don't leave much time for tourism."

  Captain Musha looks at me. I can't read her dog-deer features. "The Autumn Forests burned years ago," she says.

  Sympathy or accusation? Both valid stances.

  "Before then, my tribe and a hundred like it roam
ed among trees a mile high. We licked sap and trapped birds and gorged our fill on more kinds of fruit than you can count."

  "Your lost idylls matter nothing to us, General Monkey. Get to your point before this talk of eating makes me forget the Codes of Parley."

  "Ah, but that is my point, Waterfall. Monkey stomachs were not the only empty ones in that forest. All sorts of hunters wanted to make a snack of us: song leopards, mantisfolk, and most especially Milady D'Autumn's Evergreen Brigade. We were hunted from every direction and the other. The only thing that kept us alive was –"

  "Cooperation," says Captain Musha. Of course she gets it. She's a pirate captain. Getting a collection of cutthroat murderers pointed in the same direction is practically her job description.

  It's easier than convincing anyone smart to ally with the Burning Wizard.

  #

  Amaranth uncovered our hiding places during the Raining Season. We huddled in caves and hollows, far from the high canopies of our home, where Milady D'Autumn's people climbed to spread their twig-fingers wide and turned their bole-faces to the streaming heavens.

  Amaranth followed the scent of smoke on our fur and singled out the best of us.

  Not me. Not then.

  He bellowed his challenge, which made us bare our teeth and hoot our amusement. We didn't know better. We didn't know about wizards.

  He faced our leaders down, one after another. He endured their sharpest insults and weathered their mocking scorn. They scorched him with their fire magic and threw dung to shame him. Nothing worked.

  Then he burned them, one after another, down to the bones. He slaughtered until he found one who would bow down, accept his dominance, and pledge the fire monkeys to his cause.

  That was me.

  He granted us the tiniest sliver of his power, and told us his bidding. "All I ask," he told us, "is that you destroy my enemy, who is your enemy also."

  That's why I killed Milady D'Autumn.

  #

  The first part of the plan is simple enough.

  While Cloud Dragon conjures a downpour so fierce that the Alabaster Knight's vision is reduced to the tip of his prodigious nose, the rest of us board Captain Musha's flagship, The Animosity, where we are loaded into hollow amber cannonballs. The Bone Spiders fill the cavities with an extruded thread to protect us from harm. Don't ask for details. The content of my sinuses has more to do with silk than this stuff.

  Musha's cannoneers, it's reputed, could hit a bird on the wing with a ricochet off another bird on the wing. The shells won't breach the city walls, but what matters is accuracy, and knowing where to aim. As it happens, I have an inkling.

  I'm encased in gunk, waiting to be rolled into the barrel of Musha's main cannon, when Amaranth calls. His Burning Missive spell tricks my eyes into believing a manly pillar of flame has appeared. It's vastly preferable to the reality. "General Monkey, what is the state of my plan?"

  Webbed up like next week's dinner, I can't twitch a single cheek. "The alliance will hold long enough to find the Golden Salamander's Torc, Master. I wouldn't rely on a moment more."

  "Betrayal is to be expected. Wizards are greedy narcissists, never to be trusted."

  "If you say so, Master."

  Amaranth's flaming image narrows its eyes. "You have never given me cause to doubt your loyalty, General. It would be a pity if you were to forego my trust at this ultimate hour."

  "Perish the idea, Inestimable One. It's my claustrophobia talking. Have you ever been submerged in necromantic glue inside a giant amber ball? It's more terrifying than it sounds. You should try it sometime."

  Fire-Amaranth waves a dismissive hand. "I shall travel the Searing Paths when you have secured my destination point. Do not fail me."

  "You can rely on me, boss."

  "Fly then, General, and claim my prize."

  A boom like autumn thunder surrounds me. A void of panic empties my gut, like the instant of missing a branch or spotting a predator. If I could move, I would bite my cigar so hard I'd swallow it.

  I fly at the Alabaster Citadel in a cocoon of gold and glue.

  #

  Milady D'Autumn's people called themselves the Arbora, or sometimes the Kingdom of Branches. When we thought about them at all, which was not often when they weren't hunting and chasing us, my people called them Twiggers and Saplings and Bushfeet, and a hundred other cheeky names.

  They hunted us in the dark windy weeks before the snows came. Before food became scarce. Sometimes they set snares for us. Sometimes they trained hunting birds to pluck our young from the treetops. Often they just threw spears or loosed arrows. Once in a while they got lucky, killing one of us who was too young, slow or inattentive.

  It didn't matter to the rest. We monkey kings would laugh and tease and bare our arses at the soldiers with their leaf green tunics. When they got too close, we wished the forests aflame and escaped in the smoky mayhem. As we swung off, we heard their cries over the crackling flames and laughed all the harder.

  Those cries sustained us through winter. How we laughed.

  #

  Light seeps through the enveloping gunk, which sloughs off my fur like a rotten fruit rind. I am sliding on a treacly smear down the side of the Tower of Chalk. I snatch a passing window ledge and swing myself inside.

  The Cloud Dragon's downpour begins, blasting the walls clean of spider goo and cannon shell fragments in my wake.

  Inside, our shells have devastated a gallery of delicate tapestries and ornate sculptures. Captain Musha and the Bone Spiders clean themselves of muck in the rubble.

  "I missed the window," I say with a scowl at Musha. "Perhaps your gunners aren't as good as you claim?"

  Musha booms with laughter. "We all made it, General Monkey! When three of four shots find their mark, I call it a success!"

  "Cool yourssself, little ape," says Shiklizk the Marauder. "A minor missscalculation. Nothing more, unlessss you wisssh to make an accusssation?"

  Musha's hand drops to the pommel of her magic sword Winning Argument. Is that a wicked monkey-cutting grin on her snout?

  "Of course not," I reply, flicking gunk from the tip of my cigar. I am suddenly desperate for a smoke. "This partnership has never been stronger."

  "Funny you should say that," says Musha, crossing to the window and pointing up at the furious storm clouds roaring thunderclaps and vomiting torrents. The face of the Cloud Dragon is sketched in lightning flashes, gleaming with sadistic fervour.

  A blinding blue flash appears at the centre of the tumult. It spreads through the tumultuous clouds like a glowing ink stain. The tenor of the thunder changes, rising to a deafening howl.

  "What was that?"

  "One o' my special shells," replies Musha. The clouds solidify into ice, a great block that fills the sky. At its dark heart is the Cloud Dragon, its dim face frozen with inarticulate rage. "I bound a colony of arctic wind spirits inside. T'ey come out real angry."

  The dark sky cracks. Shards fall like frozen knives onto the streets and lanes of the Eggshell Citadel. Some of the bigger pieces glint like dragon scales.

  "Very resourceful." I turn from the carnage below, where the Alabaster Knight's citizens and foot soldiers have been annihilated. "Did I not explain the concept of alliance clearly enough?"

  Musha swaggers, pleased with her handiwork. "If a pirate knows anyting, Monkey, t'en she knows how equal shares work."

  "We are wasssting time." Zikizz's tiger-mandibles rattle in hungry anticipation. "We cannot sssplit a prizzze before it'sss found."

  "Lead on, O treasure hunter."

  The Tower of Chalk overlooks the Pallid Keep; we climb down from one to the other almost undisturbed. A drenched and battered Pearl Angel spots us. It tries to raise the alarm with its bleached horn, which scours the memory of hope from its victims.

  Captain Musha throws a knife in its eye. While it's confused, Shiklizk bites its head off.

  We don't see anyone else until Zikizz's uncanny loot-sense leads us to the K
night's treasure chamber.

  It's an indoor pond.

  Warm mossy rocks and a thicket of jungle plants surround a dark pool. Soothing insect sounds fill the air. Light beams cut through thick fronds, radiating from some unseen sun and mottling the rippling water.

  The Golden Salamander is splayed across the largest rock; a ring of beaten silver and bronze is propped atop its flat head. His bulbous eyes swivel lazily toward us.

  "Well, if it isn't the red monkey," he drawls. "Wondered who'd get to me first."

  "The Burning Wizard's got his eye on your torc," I explain.

  His eyes swirl and roll independently, taking in my motley company. "Not such a good idea, Red. The Knight won't give me up without a fight."

  Zikizz scuttles forward to the water's edge. "We care nothing for you, lizzzard. Sssurrender your prize or we will take it from your husssk."

  The Salamander sticks out its tongue in a slow flop. "Can't do that. It's attached."

  "Then I feassst," snaps Zikizz. It pounces.

  "Hey, stop!" My warning's too late. The Salamander closes his eyes as the torc flashes like the sun. Zikizz bounces away like an invisible leash has snapped it back. It hits the wall and curls into a twitching ball.

  "Sorry!" says the Salamander. "I can't help it. It's a reflex!"

  "Sssibling!" snaps Shiklizk. It tenses for an attack but I'm no longer off guard. I throw a wall of flames in its path.

  "Back off, Bones! Stick to the plan."

  Shiklizk turns in a rage, raising its gleaming forelegs to strike. I wonder what it's like to be digested in a necromantic cage of animated bones. It's not a happy picture.

  Then Zikizz chitters shakily and rolls itself upright in an ungainly spread of legs. It's alive. Alive-ish? Whatever.

  "Happy now?" I waggle my burning middle finger in Shiklizk's bone face until it backs off with a disgruntled hiss. "Good. Remember, the torc is trying to protect itself. Guard the door. Concentrate on not looking like an unspeakably nightmarish threat."