Eden Green

by Fiona van Dahl

  I put on a desperate burst of speed and close the distance with the edge of the herd as fast as I can. I randomly choose a cow near the edge and adjust my trajectory to meet her. Then, hissing a prayer to the god of all cowboys, I take a running leap that, if badly timed, could land me rolling on the ground in front of the predators or under the cow’s long, stomping hooves.

  I grab up thick handfuls of long fur and wince, expecting the skin of my hands to rip open. But to my shock, the bristles along her back have no forward-slanting thorns; as long as I don’t impale myself on the bristles, I can haul myself up with ease. The cow bucks a little, but her attention is consumed with escape, and once she realizes I’m not going to bite, she ignores me.

  From my new vantage clinging to her back, I can see five different giraffes on the edges of the herd, and a few small swarms of exes rolling around their ankles. Scavengers, I realize. By now, all but two of the giraffes have caught themselves a meal, and the other two quickly fall back to fight over the slaughtered herbivores. In another thirty seconds, the herd is stampeding away from nothing.

  I ride as far as I can, but I’m so afraid of injuring myself on the cow’s spines that my grip can’t last long. I finally slide off her back and roll to a stop in the grass on the side of a hill. A few bruised ribs make me wince, but as the herd shuffles past, finally calming down, I’m grateful I didn’t land underneath hooves or in front of a predator.

  I get up, dust myself off, and look around. I’m in the mountain’s foothills now; whether through erosion or engineering, the slopes seem to funnel toward a certain point in the rocks ahead. I swallow hard, pull out a water bottle, and start chugging as I make my way forward.

  Sure enough, I clear the top of a foothill and see an opening in the ground up ahead, like the entrance to a mining shaft. When I look back, a few calves have followed me curiously but remain at the bottom of the hill, twenty yards away. I keep walking, but they stay, though whether out of fear of me or the mountain or of leaving the herd, I don’t know.

  Approaching the opening sends chills up and down my spine. I can’t decide if the scene is beautiful — something out of Tolkien, or Lewis and Clark — or frighteningly alien. “Oh, they have caves where you come from, too?” I ask aloud, joking with invisible natives, but my own words sound so hideously out-of-place that I shut up. Just like home.

  I stop a few feet from the entrance and dig through my backpack for my flashlight. The moment I turn it on and shine it inside, my breath catches in my throat. The walls are smooth stone, and continue straight into the hill.

  This is artificial.

  I sit down hard on the ground. There’s a weird keening sound coming out of my mouth; I cover it with my hand, keep it inside me.

  I just discovered evidence of extraterrestrial — maybe extra-dimensional — intelligent beings.

  For a few minutes I just sit there breathing, staring at those stone walls. Someone cut this stone from a quarry and placed it here, with a design in mind, for a purpose. They elected to arrange them in a pleasing, organized pattern, flush and level and even.

  A little part of myself wants to be terrified — whatever I encounter inside that mountain could have incomprehensible moral systems and technology advanced enough to resemble magic. They might look horrifying or, annoyingly, they might look like humans with forehead ridges. But either way, they’re not from Earth and will have no idea what Earth is. If they’re not humanoid, they won’t know what I am.

  Slowly, I start to feel disappointment creeping in on my wonder. The tunnel walls are worn, and a few stones near the outer edge have fallen from their places and grown moss on the hillside. All signs point to this place being abandoned; the civilization that built it might even have gone extinct.

  But if there’s a chance I could meet and communicate with natives who might have more information on the needle-creatures and how to stop them coming through the portals— And they might even know the secrets of the blood-borne symbiote taking over my body— There could be a cure— I’d be communicating with aliens—

  I get to my feet, shoulder my backpack, and approach the entrance as cautiously as I can despite the adrenaline pouring through me. I move through warm air, then cool, then warm, and then I’m inside, and the air is cold enough to give me goosebumps. The tunnel is narrow and high; if I stood on my own shoulders as I walked, my hair would brush the dusty ceiling.

  A few yards in, the tunnel opens out into a wide room. The far wall is flat and smooth, and covered in tiny marks. I approach and shine my light all over it for a minute, trying to figure out if it’s writing. Results are inconclusive, but I take plenty of pictures to analyze later. If I ever find an internet connection, I might post them somewhere public just to see what happens.

  As I approach the center of the wall, a wave of nausea floods me, and I take a step back. Then, despite my rolling stomach, I approach again. Same thing. When I press my hands toward that area, my left hand starts to tremble and my wrist stings. If the writing is designed to repel needle-creatures, that might explain why there are no monsters here. I may be able to refactor it into an anti-Tedrin weapon, but at the moment I’m dying to explore. I back away, making a mental note to experiment with the wall later.

  “Hello?” I call up into the high darkness. “Is anyone still here?”

  Abandoned silence gapes at me. I can feel the weight of beings all around me, but they’re only ghosts. I’m abruptly sure that this place has been empty for centuries, if not longer. Disappointment is bitter in the back of my throat.

  Still, they might have left interesting things for me to find. I start exploring the room, taking pictures, calling out every now and then in case someone can hear. “I come in peace! Take me to your leader! Hello? Mysterious extraterrestrial says ‘what’?”

  At the far right-hand side of the room is a dark doorway. I approach, shine my light through it, and find a stone staircase twisting up into the darkness. This is the part where I would say ‘curioser and curioser!’ if I were completely unoriginal and lame.

  A pale face appears in my flashlight beam.

  I shriek at the top of my lungs and flinch so hard, I drop the flashlight. My hand closes around the butt of my shotgun and starts to wrench it up around my shoulder on its sling.

  “Will you keep the fucking noise down?” demands a very human, very frustrated voice. As I bring the shotgun to grip and reach for the barrel light, I hear footsteps approaching in the dark. Just as I switch it on, someone picks up the dropped flashlight and points it at me.

  Tedrin and I stare at each other in the dark, him blinking sleepily and half-shading his eyes.

  I swallow and try to ignore how hard my heart is pounding. “I keep running into you in dark places.”

  “Oh, shut up,” he mutters, lowering the flashlight to point at the ground. “I’ve been out there all day trying to figure out easier ways to kill these things, and I settle down for ten minutes of sleep, and you come around shouting and screaming and—” He sighs loudly while rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Just this once, I’d like you to not point your gun at me.”

  I lower the barrel a bit, feeling sheepish despite myself. He’s dressed for colder weather, and his sweatshirt has two gaping, bloody holes in the front and mottled flesh underneath. “What are the odds we’d meet up on this side?”

  “This is my third time over here.” I knew he was holding out on us! “From what I can tell, all portals appear within sight of this mountain. Considering it’s the most interesting part of the landscape, it makes sense we’d both head for it.”

  I shake my head disapprovingly. “What are you doing here, man?”

  “Same as you, trying to find answers. This seemed like a good place to start.” He makes a vague gesture. “Wish I could have seen your face when you found this dump. Did you do a little Carl Sagan speech about how we’re no longer alone in the universe?”

  I try not to let my annoyance show. “Where’s Ron? Is she with
you?”

  Tedrin gives me a tired look. “I told you to call her. Some ‘best friend’ you are.”

  My throat tightens. “If you’ve hurt her—”

  He scoffs and looks away. “You really don’t have an ‘off’ switch, do you? She . . .” He trails off, staring into the darkness, then shakes his head. “We broke up.”

  For several seconds I just stare at him, not comprehending. Then one corner of my mouth hooks up in a smirk that I simply cannot banish no matter how hard I mentally scream at it to go away. “Oh?”

  “Are you going to snark at me or are you going to ask why?”

  I physically force my face back into a serious position. “Why?”

  He turns and heads back to the staircase. “Come on, I’ve got food.”

  “I do, too.”

  “Not like this.” He disappears up the stairs.

  My stomach gurgles; apparently, panic and running and scientific discovery burn up cold ravioli pretty fast. I follow warily, shotgun still ready.

  He’s waiting for me just beyond the doorway. “You can put that away; the monsters don’t come here.”

  “It’s not the monsters I’m—”

  “Yeah, whatever,” he mutters, and starts up the stairs. My shoulders are starting to hurt from carrying the gun, but I keep hold of it.

  He leads me up a curving flight of stone steps carved into the mountain itself. Tunnels and balconies open off it, letting in cool air from outside. I’m jealous that he’s had more time to explore this place; part of me is dying to interrogate him on what he’s found.

  At last, he turns off into an open-air balcony the size of my living room. We’re surprisingly high up, and the edge has no rail, allowing a breathtakingly beautiful view of the plains. The floor is smooth stone, pockmarked with weather damage near the edge. The ceiling is high and dusty.

  Embedded in the center of the floor is a softly glowing red stone the size of a dinner plate. There’s a backpack on the floor next to it, its canned and packaged contents spilled in a sloppy line. There’s cup ramen, canned soup, a bag of kiwifruit . . . and a little pan of broth simmering on top of the glowing rock.

  Tedrin sits down next to it and uses a spoon to stir the broth. “If I can figure out how to dig it out of the rock, I’m bringing this thing home with me. No power source that I can see; it just makes heat.”

  I take off my backpack, set it down next to his, and take a seat. My stomach gurgles again. He pours some of the broth into a handy mug and holds it out to me. When I stare at it for just a moment too long, he sighs angrily, holds it to his lips, and takes several long draughts. He’s even gulping angrily.

  “Okay, okay.” I hold up my hands. “It’s not that I’m thinking you’ll poison me. But did you use any native ingredients?”

  He lowers the mug and gives me an ‘are you fucking stupid’ look. “No. Not even water.” He points his chin at the cup ramen. “I use bottled water with those.”

  Mollified, I accept the mug from his hands and stare down into the steaming broth. I hesitate, then add, “Thank you.”

  He’s back to staring into the middle distance.

  I sip the broth and it’s good, unbelievably good, after my few hours in the wilderness. I swallow, purse my lips for a moment, and ask, “So, why did you and Ron break up?”

  He’s silent for a few minutes, during which time I empty the mug and help myself to another. There are a few empty cans lined up on the ledge, more baffling artifacts for future explorers.

  “I told her the truth,” he says at last. He looks at me like he’s recognizing me as a fellow human for the first time, as if it bothers him. “That it was me who broke your neck.”

  We stare at each other through the gentle heat-waves coming up off the red stone.

  I swallow and set the mug on the ground, mostly-empty. A few questions buzz around my head, but the one that comes out first is, “Why the hell would you do that?”

  “Because I’m afraid for her. I was trying to explain why.”

  “And she wouldn’t let you get a word in edgewise.”

  “She was already upset over your fight, and she was saying some, ah . . . nasty things about you. I thought it would be the perfect time to come clean about that night.” He bites his lip, creating a surprisingly vulnerable image, and then hurriedly clears his throat. “Didn’t work out that well.”

  I stare down at my hands. “Well, how about you explain it to me? I’ve got nothing to do but listen.” An unpleasant memory surfaces. “Besides, you said so yourself — she’s strong, but I might understand.”

  “Sometimes I think about how I must look to you — like a psychopath.”

  I cough.

  “And you have every right to, after how I’ve acted, what I’ve done.” He relaxes until he’s resting his weight on his elbows, and stares up at the stone ceiling. “On a scale of one to ten, how well do you think you know yourself?”

  The question takes me aback, but I frown and try to answer accurately. “About a seven or eight. I rarely surprise myself.”

  He nods. “So if you were to do something uncharacteristic, react to something in a way that you wouldn’t normally . . . would you notice?”

  “Well, yeah. Duh.”

  He presses his lips together and stares into space for a moment. “It’s hard to talk about this. It’s abstract.”

  “Go on.”

  “What if your . . . What if the picture of yourself that you keep in your head was also changing?”

  “I’m going to need an example.”

  “Would you ever kill an animal, just for the thrill?”

  I scoff. “No.”

  “What if, suddenly, you had the urge to, and at the same time, your worldview, your standards for how you view and interact with animals, also changed to suit that urge?”

  “That’s absurd.”

  He sits up, takes the mug, pours himself some broth, and sips at it while he stares out over the plains. “Let’s try this: How do cells copy themselves?”

  “Mitosis.”

  “And how do all those little proteins know how to arrange themselves? RNA, right?”

  “DNA.”

  He nods, takes a contemplative sip. “These needles are cells.”

  “That’s my theory.”

  “And in order to take over our bodies and heal our injuries, they must have copied our blueprint, either from our DNA or through some process of their own. But now they know what your body is supposed to look like and how the cells are supposed to be arranged. They have to be pretty accurate, or you’d devolve into a featureless blob pretty quickly.”

  I touch my recently-broken nose and wonder, with some unnecessary paranoia, if it’s the exact shape it used to be.

  And then I start to put the pieces of this conversation together.

  And then my stomach turns very cold.

  “That blueprint lets the needles recreate everything in your brain,” he whispers, looking at me. “But no clone is perfect.”

  I swallow. “After your brain grew back, your memory was gone.”

  “Not ‘gone’, exactly. Neurons were scrambled, wires crossed. If not for the needles working around the clock to keep me functioning, I would probably be retarded, or even brain-dead.” Sip.

  We sit in silence. My mind spins as I desperately recall recent memories, almost at random, comparing them to past behavior, begging for zero inconsistencies.

  He smirks. “You’re looking back over the past few days, trying to think if you’ve done anything uncharacteristic.” Sip. “Welcome to my world.”

  “So you’re saying you weren’t a psycho killer before you were infected.” My tone is nastier than necessary.

  “Would I have tricked a girl I just met into going to a dangerous place, taken pleasure in her torture, murdered her with my bare hands, and forced her best friend to agree to doom her to my curse?” He looks at me, and his dark eyes are honest, unflinching. “I don’t think so,” he whispers, and t
here’s doubt in his voice, almost a questioning note, as if begging me for confirmation.

  I shake my head, lips pressing together angrily. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to act like that and then blame it on the needles.”

  “If I’m right, it’ll happen to Veronica, too.” He draws a shuddering breath. “And to you.”

  I’m still shaking my head. “You’re full of shit.”

  “While I’ve been here, alone, I’ve finally been able to think. And I realized that there isn’t only one death for us.”

  “There’s two. The first was when you broke my goddamn neck, and the second will be when I figure out how to die despite these stupid needles.”

  It's his turn to shake his head. "There are more."

  "Oh, this oughtta be good."

  He sets the mug down and starts counting on his fingers. "The first death — Veronica and I being torn open, you with your broken neck. The second . . ." He makes a pistol with two fingers and holds it under his chin; he meets my eyes and says softly, "Pow."

  "I don't follow."

  "Complete destruction of the original brain.” He lowers his pistol-hand. “If you and Veronica are careful, you might delay yours for years, even decades. Even when your bodies are made up only of needles, you might still retain most of your original brain tissue. Unlike the rest of your body, grey matter doesn’t regularly rebuild itself. But inevitably, whether through crushing or gunshot or who-knows-what, you will experience second death.”

  When I say nothing, he continues, “I hadn’t put it together at the time, but when you had that shotgun barrel in your mouth, that’s what I was trying to save you from.” He starts counting on his fingers again. “Total memory loss, mental function goes to shit for a while, plays havoc on your emotions . . ." He trails off, trapped in an unpleasant place in his head.