Gwen took her regular tablet out of her bag and said, “Look, there’s so much bullshit out there. We could do this all night and just keep reading crazy theories. I’m going to talk to some people who will know what’s going on.” She tapped away on her tablet for a while and I wasn’t really paying attention, just messing around playing some music and opening another bottle of wine. Then Gwen said, “Okay. Look.”
She showed me a video of something, but I didn’t know what I was looking at. Not at first, anyway. Then the camera pulled back a little bit. It was murky, a bit like looking at someone’s ultrasound of their child. The birth of the death of the world.
We were looking at a thing in a tank. A sea monster. There’s no other word for it. It was enormous, and it had so many eyes. You’d go mad with as many eyes as that.
“Where did you find this?” I said.
Gwen shrugged. “You have to go to the dark web to get any of the good stuff,” she said. I wondered, not for the first time, what it was Gwen actually did for a living and whether I ever wanted to find out. “The guy who passed this on to me says it’s legit.”
“Turn it off,” I said, my eyes closed, but I felt like just the viewing of the thing brought something unwholesome into the room with us.
When I was a child, even though we lived in Portland and not at the coast, I used to have nightmares about the tsunamis they said would accompany the Big One. I imagined the waves towering over me and blotting out the sun. I would try to run, but my legs wouldn’t work. Then the water would take me, and the worst part was that I wouldn’t drown right away; first I would be cast down to the deepest depths where things lived that ought not to, that we ought to never know about.
That night, the dreams came to Gwen and me. They were like my tsunami nightmares, only a thousand times worse. It felt as though our unconscious minds were being colonized. There was the wave again, and the attempt to run away, and the dragging down into the depths. Only this time, down there deep were cities built on grids that made no sense and architecture that defied reason. We were both shaken awake at the same moment because the quake that was happening around us was real, but in those first startled seconds, we each saw in the other’s eyes that we had dreamed the same unspeakable dream.
Then there was just the sickening swaying, the sound of car alarms going off, and people shouting and things falling over and breaking in other parts of my apartment. When it ended, we just sat there and looked at each other for a few more moments.
I wanted to say something to Gwen. When I opened my mouth, a word I didn’t know came out, a word from the dream. What I said to her was, “R’lyeh.”
I couldn’t imagine why I’d said something like that. It upset me so much I just got out of bed and left the room. I went to check the damage: some broken dishes, a bookcase turned over. I actually started to clean it all up before I realized it didn’t really matter any longer.
I went back to Gwen. “Get dressed,” I said. “Let’s go for a drive.”
Outside, people were spilling out into the streets in bathrobes and pajamas talking about the quake, and there were helicopters overhead. I wondered if we’d get out of the city at all.
But most of the checkpoints weren’t even staffed, and the ones that were waved us on with no more than a perfunctory ID check. Gwen said, “Are we going to Newport?”
“I guess,” I said, “as close as we can get anyway. I thought we’d see what we could about what’s up.”
I took the longer scenic route, the one that would take us along the coast from Lincoln City rather than the quicker way down I-5. Although getting out of Portland was surprisingly easy, once we hit US 101 it was clear that lots of other people had the same idea. We were sitting in near gridlock, still a good twenty miles or more from Newport, when Gwen announced, “I’m walking.”
“What?”
“Walking,” she said to me wearily. “Not all the way to Newport. Not yet anyway. But it’s not that far from here to Cape Foulweather, maybe an hour or so.”
I started to protest that I couldn’t just leave my car there, but of course that was silly. Another thing that no longer mattered.
It actually took us more than an hour to walk to the ocean, but it was a cool, pleasant day. In fact, the sky was so blue you couldn’t really believe anything bad could be happening. The same was true when we reached the state park area and made our way down to the deserted beach. One long stretch of blue, ocean meeting horizon, and so tranquil that the clenching in my chest began to loosen. Maybe it had all been a mistake. That had happened to me before: I’d work myself up about something and then getting out for a hike or a drive at the coast, out into nature, would help it all fall back into perspective.
And then the shaking began again.
We looked out across the ocean. As far as the eye could see, shapes were rising from the waters, the sea running off their foul flesh. All the while, the earth trembled and shook. What you knew then was that the reign of man was over, or more to the point, that it had never really begun. That we had been little more than a dream these beings had as they slept and now would banish on waking just as we once banished our nightmares in the light of day. But it was daylight, and the nightmare wouldn’t stop.
Gwen is not with me any longer. I am writing this on backs of paper menus in a diner that I walked to back up on the highway. My pen is almost out of ink, so I won’t be able to add much. The owner has a generator and has opened the place and is giving out free coffee to people and cooking stuff for them too if they want it, but mostly, nobody has much of an appetite any longer. Near me, two little kids are playing, maybe five or six years old. One of them is wearing a Superman cape. We could use an interplanetary superhero right now all right. In fact, if there’s anything out there that can save us, that would be it.
I’m not holding out hope.
Gwen has continued on, on foot. Said she wanted to get to Newport and find Jess. I tried to argue with her. I said she wouldn’t get far, that they wouldn’t let her in if she did, but she figures it’s all gone to pieces so much by this point that no one is in control any longer.
I’d have told you that I would never let Gwen walk away from me like that, that I loved her too much to ever let such a thing happen, but the end of the world does funny things to your priorities. Just like finding Jess, who never mattered, suddenly became so important to her. I knew then we had come to the end of our story together and there was no point in me either joining her or trying to persuade her to come with me.
And you know, maybe she found him. Maybe she did. Maybe they had an ecstatic world-ending fuck. I like to think that’s how it happened anyway. It’s almost—almost—a happily ever after, you know? It’s a secret I don’t like to share, that I like happy endings, sappy reunions, journeys that end in lovers meeting. We are drawing to our own end here and I still don’t know who I am writing this for, writing this to. I have no lover waiting for me, gentle reader, but I was here, and she was here, and we were once
(Testimony XVI ends here)
Lynda E. Rucker is an American writer born and raised in the South and currently living in Europe. She has sold more than two dozen short stories to magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, The Best Horror of the Year, Black Static, F&SF, Shadows and Tall Trees, Supernatural Tales, Postscripts, and Nightmare Magazine. She is a regular columnist for Black Static, and her first collection, The Moon Will Look Strange, was released in 2013 from Karōshi Books.
The World Ends in Neon Yellow
LA Knight
How do you tell the world that it’s ending?
My name is Cassie Carter. The people around here call me Ghost because that’s what I am. Just one of the wraiths who wander New York, hiding behind our pretty or pallid masks. Beneath mine, I’m faceless. Just another lost pixie of a girl, all sharp bones and mocha skin and boy-cut hair, sleeping in the trees of Central Park to stay safe
at night. Probably painting visions in electric color and her own heart’s blood across marquees and billboards and ad screens by day.
Faceless wraith girl, but the denizens of the city know me well.
Ice crusts the sidewalks winding through the park tonight. October is a vicious old hag the closer it gets to Halloween, shaking her fist at the local street kids. The snap and burn of her bitter wind slaps my cheeks and pinches my ears. It hasn’t snowed yet, but it will. Halloween’s tomorrow, and October’s letting out all her rage because no way will she agree to just age gracefully and get out of November’s way.
I’m on my way back from an advertising job, uneasy on my feet. I don’t usually work at night—kids get swept off the street too fast, too frequently, and no one cares but the ones left behind—but I need the cash for an upgrade. So now, I have to be a shadow, a ghost. I touch my tongue to the chip behind my right eyetooth to kill my temporary skinlights and the flashers in the soles of my shoes. No reason to go prancing along like a walking ad for android sneakers.
I stop at the edge of the park to scan the sky. Most people can’t see past the toxic haze of exhaust mingling with the billows of steam coming off the skyscrapers, but I can. There’s tingling behind my eyes, a wash of warmth that’s nice with October cold smacking me in the face; the nanowires behind my retinas let me zoom in on the sky, filtering sludge and smog. Behind it, I find Orion with the three stars on his belt, just like my dad taught me. I find the Pleiades, those seven sisters.
I find that burning-cold beacon trapped between them, screaming bright amidst the star-haze of Taurus. Aldebaran, the Follower. Harbinger of things my dad always prayed would never come in my lifetime. I’m starting to wonder if they’ll ever come, or if I’ve wasted my life preparing for something that will never happen.
The wind slaps harder, bitter cold, and slices right through my jacket. Should’ve brought a coat. Should’ve kept my gloves instead of giving them to the boy by the 59th Street entrance. Philip, I think his name is. I hunch my shoulders like that can somehow keep my ears from falling off from frostbite and trudge along the path, kicking aside scraps of trash. Central Park doesn’t close until 1:00 a.m., so I’ve got a little more than an hour before they sweep the paths. As long as I keep my skinlights dimmed and remember to cut the power to my tent, I should be okay.
Detritus litters my way; people think they can just dump their crap right on my doorstep. I can’t complain because, legally, I’m not supposed to be here.
A scrap of yellow paper, practically dayglo bright even in the dimness, catches my eye. I snatch it from the air before it can hit my cheek. Three quick blinks to adjust my ocular wiring, and I can read the blocky print splashed across the page. Pins prick the tips of my fingers; my hand convulses around the thick paper, my nails slicing tiny tears.
The Rialto Invites You to This One-Time Showing
The King in Yellow
Midnight, October 31st
The paper crumples easily, and I hurl it against an elm. It falls to the frosted grass and uncurls slowly, a poisonous neon flower mocking me with every paper petal. I hurry past, never looking back as I head for my tree.
I guess my wondering is over.
Sleeping in a beech tree is easy if you’ve got the gear. People would probably be shocked about the Ghost living in the park when I’ve got so many good jobs—hacking rich people’s tech to blast protest art across their LCD boards pays big bucks—but it grounds me, gives me a toehold in the physical world. The bark offers good traction for my sneakers. Clambering up the tall trunk puts a sweet burn in my calves and gives my fingers something to dig into, almost like punching code into an actual keyboard.
And just like keyboards, everything will soon be obsolete, but not for the reasons most people think.
I string up the tent I keep in my backpack—insulated micronylon flaps on nylon cables, hammock and tent and sleeping bag all rolled into one, braced by cords tied and retied to the beech’s limbs. The floor gives when I walk—like jello. Cold to the touch, it warms up quickly from my body heat. No October hag can gnaw my bones in here.
How do I tell the world it’s ending? That nothing we do can stop it? Not in the time we have. Probably not at all.
Tomorrow is October 31st. Halloween. The book my dad gave me when I left for New York calls it Samhain. The slip-space between dimensions wavers on nights like that. Splits like an egg sac. Sometimes it spits out things. Nasty things. But I’ve never been afraid of that until now.
My fingertips trace over the small bumps on my arm from the temporary skinlights. They mask the scars, lines of silver and cerise. Tiger stripes suffused with dormant poison. Scars left by nightgaunt lashes and gug kisses. I’m not afraid of them … but I’m afraid of this. Nightgaunts and gugs can be killed. Shot, electrocuted, run over with a car.
Not him.
“If it comes in your lifetime, Cassie, understand this: you can’t stop the spread. Maybe you can slow it down, but once it starts, it can’t be stopped.”
My dad’s voice, echoes of memory. I was ten years old then. I’d already written my first codes. Already hacked the school billboards twice to protest unrighteous cancellations—flashing red words screaming: “We want book fairs back!” Before the age of ocular implants and LED skinlights and Xplore chips that let your mind wander cyberspace. Before I’d ever seen the yellow-painted gouges carved into the stone my dad carries close to his heart like a dirty secret.
I tie myself in—not to the tent but to the bit of branch I allow to come inside with me—just in case the tent’s cords break in the night. Tomorrow, none of this will matter, but I’d rather die on my feet than plummeting to my messy death out of a beech tree. I tug my blankets over me and close my eyes.
No time for sleep. Not yet. Not now. The dark behind my eyes is just to help me see; eyelids are the best screens in the world.
“Maybe you can slow it down, but once it spreads, you can’t stop it.” My dad’s warning. Truth, like a stone, settling cold in my stomach.
The spread will come. My dad knows it, and so do I. I have to warn him that it all starts tomorrow. He can hole up in the hills around Arkham; no one will bother him there, in our old house that everyone hisses is haunted. Even if they think the old two-story is easy pickings, the mods I put in will keep them back.
Getting to Arkham before the spread hits will be costly, and I have to make it quick. But this is what the Carters have prepared for, and I’m the best at sending out the quick warning; have been ever since I learned to tweet and tumble and pin and blog and hack my way through the web.
Old folks joke about my generation live-tweeting the Apocalypse. I’m counting on the fact that, hells yeah, we will, or this will never work. If it doesn’t, pretty much everyone in the world dies in the next forty-eight hours.
Even if it does work, a lot of people are going to be dead really soon, anyway.
I have to tell the world it’s going to end. Even worse, I have to make people believe me.
The best thing I ever did was talk my dad into giving me the Xplore implant for my eighteenth birthday. It’s what makes all this possible now. All I have to do is let my eyes relax in their sockets, the tightness at the corners ease up, until my eyes just rest in the dark inside my head.
My tongue touches the pressure sensor on my last molar on the left, near the top of my mouth. Neon green and yellow lines cut across my vision, slicing and skewing through each other. Mapping out the path to the internet. I follow the weaving pathway of light in my skull to the coding site I’d bookmarked back in fifth grade. Still my favorite place to work.
I focus on the streams of ones and zeroes floating around the edges of my vision, waiting to be written into sequence so they can do something. The bits and pieces of the world, information ground down to light and electric impulses, all inside my brain. The pearl of the soul of the world, my dad always called it. I can hold everything in my mind when I hit this place up. Touch anything. Search en
gines beg me to shoot them a question while social media begs me to pin some Disney pics or repost some Tumblr gold. But there’s no time for fun. I have to lay the foundations of the alert.
Binary digits sift through my metaphorical fingers as I weave threads of code, twisting and braiding bytes and stringing them together.
With a stray thought, music begins pulsing from the tiny chips in my cochlear implants—earbuds the size of pinheads. Perfect for pretending to pay attention in school. And now, perfect for working, the volume at just the right decibels to keep me sharp as a laser scalpel.
Have to plant the right images into the code. Have to shovel scads of information into nanoseconds, keep it short. Give people a chance to panic and then calm down and figure out how to run. And it won’t just be anyone with the green to afford augmentation. When I’m done, this whole city will be one giant neon warning sign.
Scouring DeviantArt and Wikias for pics to embed takes a while. My Xplore implant processes and places everything—the search words “war,” “mass murder,” “violent orgy,” and “global holocaust” are pretty effective for illustrations of what’s going to start tomorrow night at midnight. My implant is an Xplore Golden Plus; I get great Wi-Fi reception, even out here in the middle of Central Park surrounded by trees, and my firewalls keep other people with BCI from hacking my feed.
Tired. Everything shifts into place like a charmed game of Psi-Tetris. I leave my signature in the code, the phantom of myself. They call me Ghost for a reason—I can slip in anywhere, and my programs come back to haunt.
Tomorrow's Cthulhu: Stories at the Dawn of Posthumanity Page 29
