by Davi Cao
The tank thread held the vehicle well in the first incline, but soon it reached a near vertical ascent, leaning back, about to tumble. Laura kicked the driver, she ordered a retreat, finding the wall obviously impassable by vehicles.
“We’ll either have to wait until it deflates, or we try to climb it with our own hands. Behind this barrier, we’ll have all the resources we could ever wish for,” she said.
“Oh, holy one, wasn’t this barrier triggered by the creatures lying behind it? It might be dangerous.”
“They did it, yes. That’s why they’re not dangerous. If they could harm us, they would have done it.” Laura grabbed her backpack, leaving the tank to speak with her followers. “I think we can do it if we climb together. We have ropes and tools with us. I think we can make a trail for ourselves.”
Five distinct groups of ten people each equipped themselves with climbing gear, guided by selected leaders for the first attempt. Five teams walked toward the hills, the friction on their shoes offering support on the steep inclines against which they battled.
Where the wall became a vertical obstacle, the leaders hammered pins on the surface, or tried to do so. Nothing pierced. They pushed against impenetrable rubber, each hammer bounce threatening to throw the climber downhill.
“It’s over, we can’t get it done. Get back, everybody, get back, we have to think of something else,” one leader said.
“Throw the rope to the other side! It will grab onto something!” Laura screamed beneath him, and as she did so, she lost her balance and fell.
The climber under her grabbed her arm, but the woman's weight destabilized his hold, taking him and the rest of the team downhill. Bodies rolled on the soft rubbery ground, hitting heads on knees, arms on shoulders, spines on waists. The other teams who waited for orders started their descent, rushing to help with possible injuries.
“The city doesn’t want their presence, Colin. We should stop them from going there,” Dalana said, watching the scene from below, running toward the fallen ones.
“I thought they’d find a way to overcome it by themselves.” Colin followed her. “I guess I’ll have to help them out with something.”
“No, you said you didn’t want any more interference in their journey. They came for the city, and the city protected itself. It’s a fair game, on your terms, isn’t it?”
“They have to cross it, Dalana!”
“Let them try again!”
The caravan boiled with excited talk, people exploring the hills and considering new ways of scaling those perfectly smooth mountains.
“Let me have a go at it, maybe I can improvise with some suction,” a climber said.
He went up, meeting the vertical area, and with the help of suction-cups torn from the expedition’s gear, he managed to sustain himself higher up than any other.
“That’s the spirit! After he crosses the summit, we’ll use the rope to pass,” Laura said, clapping her delicate hands with the vigor of a queen.
From the summit, however, a cloud of dust hit the surface and matter turned into liquid, something viscous dripping from the edges, a bluish substance falling from the tops of all mountains. The climber changed route, going down instead of up, fearing the incoming liquid. He got down before it could reach him, but it dripped with abundance and capped the walls with slime.
“I’ll bore them a tunnel,” Colin said, uncrossing his arms with a violent twist.
“It’s ok to intervene now, then? If that’s what you want...” Dalana kept close distance to him, raising her chest to face his stare.
“That’s what I want.”
A cracking sound hit the crowd’s ears. A point of light glistened at the base of the barrier in front of them. The point grew wider until it blinded them all. When the light faded and they regained sight, a hole cut through the wall, a tunnel ready for their crossing. Laura waited not one minute more. She got up and marched ahead.
“I’m ok, I’m ok. It was just a shock.” Laura smoothed her forehead and went on.
Walking in the hole pierced by magic through the col.loc’s own skin, people lowered their heads and avoided looking up. The walls squirmed in pain, they contracted and retracted, and each of their massive reactions shook the air and sent ripples of suffering that echoed in the confined walls, moans that emphasized the wanderers’ frailty.
Scary sounds, they gave the Terran humans’ their most intense contact yet with the inner beast who inhabited the col.loc. The tunnel threatened to collapse, contracting on itself, but Colin also walked in there, ready to protect them, wishing for it to remain opened, so it did.
The city grew in front of them, a cloud of dust mystifying the landscape ahead. People walked together, dark towers rose, tiny things flew in unison. They reacted again, the ou.uo, throwing dormant ous coated in honey compounds, forming another wall in front of the advancing caravan.
Colin wished for the point of light, for the hole through the new barrier. People closed their eyes in preparation, not surprised by the work of God protecting them from harm. They followed ahead because Laura did so. She was the prophet, after all, no more doubts, never any doubt, for she was the one, she united them by the holy father. They crossed the new tunnel.
Wise and near omniscience, the ou.uo couldn't account for the doings of Creators. The tunnels represented a glitch in their matrix, an unpredictable happening, not bound to any laws of their world.
With it came doubt, and the dark spots that they glimpsed through the honey, after all, meant the sum of events in time and space for which they lacked explanation. If they earned a new certainty from those new events, it was that walls wouldn’t hold the newcomers.
“It’s the first time I see them building large structures.” Laura said to a follower by her side.
“But they don’t live anywhere, they just walk. Are they doing this against us?” the follower said.
“The humans aren’t our enemies. They are our siblings. The danger for us comes from the things circling them. That’s what’s making everything.”
“Aren’t the little things where their minds actually are, then?”
“We once managed to separate people from their circling ecosystems. It’s useless. A new ecosystem soon forms from the ground. They are something that we can’t yet understand well.”
“And yet, here we go.”
“Stay calm. They won’t hurt us.”
The ou.uo’s orbit changed its orientation. They slanted their circle to allow for a definite touchdown point, and where they hit the ground, ripples moved across the surface, creating waves that took people up and down, waves that got steeper with every hit. People fell, losing balance, one over the other. Men screamed in fright, women struggled to get back up, children laughed at the excitement, trying to surf.
Colin wished for a fixed platform on the floor, so it materialized. A stone slab long enough to encompass the whole caravan arose from under the col.loc’s skin, an implant on the colossal creature to make its surface rigid, to give Colin’s people the support that they needed to complete their march.
Against Colin, the ou.uo hurried its already increased honey-making. They needed to see through the darkness, they needed to predict the unpredictable, things that escaped the constraints of their universe.
“God is by our side, my brothers and sisters! Nothing can stop us! Can you fell it? I asked, can you feel it?” Laura screamed at full volume, caring little whether the thousands would hear her.
“We feel it!” the crowd cheered.
“Earth is coming to greet you! We’re here to rescue our alien siblings, to teach them the way of what’s right and just. Our expansion will prevail above all else!”
Entering the dust, at last, native people became discernible. They held hands and formed a chain extending a distance none of them could yet judge, a deformed line of a thousand men and women walking together.
The towers, they seemed to be skeletons of things yet to come, they had no elegance or po
mposity, they were three buildings rising from the floor, rods coming out from their sides. Honey dripped from the flying ous, it fell for the first time on the mouths of people, who looked up, at last, to see a living disk circling higher than the waists of people, forming a dark ceiling against which the sun couldn’t penetrate.
But then, twelve explosions bored holes in front of Laura, and she backed away with hands covering her face. Colin flinched as well, looking for Dalana. He looked to his sides and only found pilgrims. Dalana stood far from him, in front of the caravan. From the twelve holes, twelve people came out, twelve people with skin of the same darkness of Dalana's.
Laura remembered Dalana, the absolute black in her complexion, a person disguised in shadows, and she reacted with immediate rage.
“They’re not God’s doing! They’re sons of the Devil!” she said, and she tried to push the first dark person back to her hole.
The dark woman who received the first strike simply allowed her shoulder to squirm sideways, pushed by Laura’s open palms. The closest ones to the front lines followed their prophet's example, jumping on the twelve mysterious people with clenched fists and tight frowns. They surrounded the twelve ones and threw them back on their holes, getting rid of those suspicious new people. The caravan wouldn't stop for anything.
“They’re not giving up...” Laura said, still fighting to keep the woman of her choice in her hole.
The woman looked at Laura with a smile, her black eyes devoid of malice, intent on the prophet’s sweat and frightened countenance. She placed her hands on Laura’s shoulders, slid them on her arms, making her lower her hands and relax her fingers.
She held Laura’s hands, swinging her spine from side to side as if to start a slow dance. At last, the woman hugged Laura, and in that hug the holy person felt her feet losing ground, flying, released from the constraints of physical anguish.
Clouds blocked her eyes, hovering high above the skies, where a city lay in the mist, well-spaced tall buildings with gardens between every tower, where a room colored with rainbows served as the perfect playground for children of all colors and personalities.
She flew closer to that room, peeking at a small girl with long black hair and tiny eyes. That little girl was herself, Laura, when little, and she laughed at the puzzle she was trying to solve on the table with her child friends.
Then the woman let go of Laura, and the prophet went looking for more. The eleven other people rose from their holes without a single scratch. The twelve were immortals, undying people who came into the world to share a little taste of their Utopia.
They disarmed the people, lowering their hands, and hugged them, taking them on trips to Heaven. Wanting more, they, the needy pilgrims, they followed the immortals, while the immortals hugged whoever hung around.
Six split up from the other six, making two circles by holding their hands three with three, circling with fast jumping feet, turning their heads from side to side at the speed of heartbeats. They untangled themselves in synchrony to touch the people thirsty for Paradise, and through that touch they either entered the immortals’ circles or formed new ones, and danced whatever dance they felt comfortable in doing, spreading the spirit of celebration throughout the caravan.
After countless groups of people found in their unison a way of glancing into Heaven, the immortals ceased their dance. People invited them to join in new steps, to try new moves, and the immortals mimicked with perfection the things people taught them, and in retribution, the immortals kissed them.
For a straight man to be kissed by an immortal woman, or for a homosexual man to be kissed by an immortal man, the feeling reached their hearts in the same beat. A euphoric thunder, the victory in life, love not for the person who showed love, but by the whole of creation for allowing such marvelous things to happen to mere mortals like them. They kissed back, they danced more. Little by little, joy contaminated the caravan, celebrating not the finding of the native city, but the fact that they existed.
“They’re loving it, see? And you, aren’t you happy to see them well?” Dalana said, placing her hands on Colin’s shoulders.
“No, please... You shouldn’t have done that.” Colin turned his face away from her loving gaze.
“It is over, my friend. You intervened, so did I.” Dalana slid her hands on his arms, mingling her fingers among his.
“They are my creation; won’t you ever respect that?” Colin pushed himself away, stopped by her hold on his hands.
“Are you respecting Ai.iA's creation?”
He bit his lips. “She allowed me to do so.”
“Didn't she allow me to do the same? See, what’s the fun of living without challenges?”
“Yeah? Wait until I challenge your Utopias, then.”
“You’re already doing it.” Dalana pulled him back, to disarm him, to make his feet lose weight.
Colin floated with her guidance, he let his body flow with her pull, with the spinning of her dance, and he smiled, he struggled to contain it, but the warm blood of joy relaxed his face. People laughed and chanted all around, honest laughs, families together, people of all ages, not just young people partying, building a life he’d never fit in, no, the caravan celebrated how he liked it, people being ridiculous and caring little about it, spinning and turning and jumping and hugging, out of care, out of love.
He pulled Dalana back, forcing her to stop, to look into her eyes and admire the only beauty in that place that could react to his presence. She was a shadow, a darkness so profound as to fill him with curiosity, for it revealed so little and yet she hid nothing. One factor didn’t match with the other, and it fascinated him.
Dalana leaned toward Colin’s face, kissed his lips, and receded.
The kiss overflowed Colin with the blood of romance, and the chemistry in his veins formed the vision of his Paradise. It spoke about love, and in his heart the picture of Angeline was so deeply ingrained that Dalana’s kiss projected not herself, but the woman who died in old Terra and spoke her last worlds in a desperate phone call.
Colin flew back to those apocalyptic days and hovered on the beach, where a crowd of people cheered the end of the world. Angeline stood alone in the sea, caressed by the waves, her knees drowning then emerging with the tide, and she stared at the horizon while Colin didn’t come.
He got down, incorporating the wind, not the sea, although he could choose to be it, because being the wind he kissed her and made her hair flow in the air, soft, silky, rising as if underwater, the entire world of their meet-up turned into the giant sea of his love for her. It was the real kiss, the real Angeline, and it was Heaven.
Awakened by Dalana’s expecting glance, he released his hands from her hold. People cheered all around, the immortals took their hugging, their kissing, and their dancing to the fringes, taking the entire caravan in their celebration, forgetting about the mission that sent them there.
They had given up of spreading Terra’s way of living, the same world to which Colin needed to get back to meet Angeline again at that beach and live the Paradise of his dreams. He had a Utopia, and it wasn’t Dalana’s.
“You keep deceiving us, you’re tricky, yes, you are,” Colin said, running away from Dalana, toward the crowd.
“What did you see? Tell me, I... I don’t know what you saw, I just wanted to show you a better place.” Dalana kept up with him.
“It was a success, then. You showed me a better place, you did show. And that’s where I’m trying to go to.”
“So, it’s not here with me.”
“Of course not. And don’t look me that way.” Colin faced her pursed lips, her raised brows. “You knew what I wanted from the start.”
Laura danced only when her followers pulled her into their circles. The true dance that guided her thoughts took her from the light-hearted joy of celebration to the rest of her mission there, of the witch’s works and the unholiness of her situation.
Colin reached her to put her back into track. He wi
shed for a gush of wind to throw her away from people, and where she fell, he created a cabin with a big screen on the wall.
“I give you weapons to fight the emissaries of evil. Fight them,” Colin said.
“What happened to us? I knew they were not your doing, but they were too tempting... I tried to resist, I swear...” Laura said, her face brightened by the screen’s half-image of a person.
“We were all tempted. If we cede to it, we’ll never even want our old world back. We must be strong and help each other. Throw these at the immortals. These will bury them.” He created twelve hand grenades on Laura’s feet.
The cabin disappeared. Laura got down to pick her weapons, making a basket with her arms to fit everything in. An immortal danced by her side.
“Get away, all of you. Leave only the witch’s creature. Do it, I command you!” she yelled, and by the power of her voice, people fled in fright.
The immortal faced Laura with a gentle smile, sleepy eyes, her inner brows raised, advancing toward the prophet with palms offered to her. Laura threw a grenade on the immortal’s chest, and the mystical woman suddenly sank underground, falling under the world’s surface. People stopped dancing to contemplate the tragedy, and as they made sense of their world, a voice claimed back their sanity.
“We are here for the city! We are here for Earth! We are here for God! Get back to me, my dear ones, abandon sin and come find salvation! Hell always greets you warmly, remember it!” Laura said.
She crossed the caravan’s crowd hunting for the immortals. They didn’t fight back, they didn’t resist by any other means other than their offers of love and Utopia. Laura threw her grenades and imprisoned them in the col.loc’s ground, sending them on a trip to the center of the world’s gravity.
“Now we march again. Aim for the honey, all of you, spread the world! It’s all ours to have, it’s our reward for keeping our heads up and fighting temptation. Come, my brothers and sisters, come take what is ours by right.” Laura led the march toward the busy native city, with its ou.uo spinning around and clouds of dust hiding away parts of the rising towers.
