by Ethan Cooper
JACK pushes back a little, looking directly up at me. “Where did you think we were?”
“I…I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it. Not an island. Where is the island?”
“Just south of Takiyoma.”
“Okay, I know where that is. That’s east of the Free States. The land used to be the east part of the North American continent.” I can see it in my mind—the land mass divided in two along what used to be a great river. The west land is the Free States, and the east land is all owned by the Takiyoma Corporation. Most everybody lives in Takiyoma. The Free States isn’t as…safe. I don’t think I’d do well in the Free States. Best to stick to civilization.
Assuming the world can remain civilized without Cyberspace.
Relaxing my hug to let JACK slide out of my arms and wiping my eyes, I retrieve my cloak from the floor.
“How are there eoas on this island?” I ask.
“I’m pretty sure they can swim. But how they got here isn’t something we should care about. That was not a random attack. They either came to this island on their own, or somebody brought them here. They attacked on purpose.”
“Were they after me or you?”
JACK doesn’t reply, but I can see her answer in her eyes, in the way she stands, in the way her hairstalks briefly stop undulating. “I don’t care who they were after,” she replies, “but I’m concerned that wasn’t all of them. There could be more. If they’re hunting us—” She stops to pick up her cloak. “—then we need to be prepared.”
“I have no clue how to do that.”
“Neither do I. But I do know a few things that we’re not going to do. First is that we’re not going to go out in the day,” she says, taking my hand, leading me into one of the side rooms. There are several bunk beds. “We’ll wait till it’s dark to leave. That means we need to sleep right now. What do you think?”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”
“At least try.”
We both take bottom bunks.
Though I’m super wrong about not being able to sleep—it takes mere minutes—there are eoas waiting for me in my dreams, so any potential restful slumber I might have is held at bay by the thuds and crashes and roars of monsters.
And eventually blood and death.
BLUE ANGEL DESCENDING: HEAVEN CITYSCAPE NIGHTMARES
17/Prologue
2195.12.11/Night
Been wandering for hours. I’m lost, but that’s not surprising. This city, these streets, these people. None of this is familiar.
That’s also not surprising.
Do I not remember this island because my memories of it are blocked like everything else, or because somebody just brought me to the island and dumped me, naked, bleeding like an unwanted, wounded animal in that alley? Each of these scenarios has its own unique flavor of distastefulness. Or perhaps I was born recently, removed from my birthing vat—then discarded like trash—as JACK suggested.
Hey, maybe I’m an alien, and I just need to get back to my spaceship so I can ditch this fucked up planet.
Down this street, up the next one, we walk, dodging people and vehicles like two ships dancing between twirling asteroids. JACK’s to one side, half a step ahead of me, giving me a target to follow. Occasionally, I have to take her hand to keep us from being separated in the throng. Every time she glances back at me, the glows of scattered fires are reflected in her eyes, making them twinkle like binary stars in an infinite void.
Light is scarce. An occasional streetlight is about all we get. One store—proclaiming Spare Particles on the sign above—bathes the street in flickering orange light. A crowd gathers in the street out front like flitterwasps to a flame. Is it wrong to be thankful for the light provided by a burning building? Even though we’re headed toward a part of the city that appears to be better lit, most of the time we move through a dimness that makes it difficult to make out details. Many streets are narrow—some packed with people, others completely empty except for JACK and me. The buildings on either side are tall, disappearing into the cloud cover above. On the narrower streets, I grab for JACK’s hand to combat a growing sense of claustrophobia, reminding my body that I’m not trapped down here alone. Why did we decide to start this whole thing after dark?
The moon is up there somewhere, only managing to manifest as a luminescent stain on the darkened cloud cover that hangs over the city.
Figures dart in and out of my vision, from shadow to shadow, as if unwilling to stay in the light too long. Can’t make out many details, but my ears are working fine. Sometimes it’s not a someone that moves in front of us, but a something, slinking, lurching with deep, wheezing breaths as JACK extends a hand backward to halt my forward momentum. Other times I can hear the whir of machinery and the clank of metal on metal, or the rhythmic hiss of pressurized air venting. Sometimes, it’s an unsettling syncopation: grinding gears and the slap of heavy, soggy flesh against the surface of the street.
A kilometer away, perhaps, something explodes. For a precious few nanoseconds, everybody on the street seems to pause, turning toward the direction of the sound, waiting for the sequel. Some people are running away; some are running toward the explosion. Some people scream; others cheer.
“Don’t worry about whatever that was,” JACK says, grabbing my hand, but not turning around. “We’re not going that way.”
Vulnerable here, without a weapon of my own. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe we should have stayed back at Aran’s secret hideout, waited for him to come back. Maybe he would have helped us. He was confident and unafraid. He didn’t seem like a bad guy. He probably had resources. Yeah, there’s no way coming out here, just the two of us, was a good idea.
We pause, food packets in hand, backs to the side of a building. “We’re doing pretty well,” JACK says.
Not sure if it’s true or if she’s still trying to keep a positive attitude to make me feel better.
The club beside us is called Damage. Dark enough here that I can only make out the faint outline of a logo painted across the front of the building. Despite the chaos, there’s a line of people out the door. The door is open, letting a discordant mix of rapid-fire electronic tones and inhuman growls out into the open air.
I close my eyes, listening to the music, wondering at the sounds, wondering if this was something I listened to before. The song is more rhythmic than melodic, and a deep part of me appreciates that right now, finding no small amount of comfort in the beat of a drum syncing with the throb in my chest.
“Cyberspace going down has a lot of people distracted,” I suggest.
There’s something rising in the music mix. A noise, not a part of the music.
“It’s almost been a week,” JACK says. “Shouldn’t they be over their initial shock?”
“Are you?”
“Mostly.” She hesitates a moment before continuing. “Okay, I guess not. It still hurts.”
The noise in the music increases in intensity, drowning out the pleasurable rhythm with an incessant buzz. What are they doing in there?
“The pain. That’s a symptom of withdrawal,” I say, hand to my forehead.
JACK responds, but I don’t hear her because the noise from the club is overwhelming everything. Only, the noise isn’t coming from the club, but from inside my head, just like before. Vision begins to flicker black, as if the connection between my brain and my eyes has suddenly gone bad.
bzzzzzZZZZt!!!!!
Update: I’m on the ground, on my hands and knees, with the world blinking like there’s a switch that turns it off and on, and some kid is playing with it. JACK’s beside me, her hand on at my back. I get a closeup of the ground. There’s a final bzzzzzZZZZt!!!!! before the static gets abruptly shut off.
The world goes with it.
18/Darkopolis
2195.12.11/Night
I come awake, but everything’s dark, and there’s no sound. Still, I can feel my head turn as I’m looking around, and I can feel m
y vocal cords vibrating as I yell. So, I guess I’m not dead, but for a brief moment, I wonder if this is what death is like—consciousness in a vast nothingness? Just us and our thoughts and nobody to share them with? Alone in great void, forever.
How disgusting.
Sounds are fading in. It’s the sound of air through my lungs in a momentous gasp, like I’m struggling for oxygen.
BLINK.
Aran’s face, close enough that I can see the pores in his skin. His eyes are silver, searching mine.
BLINK.
The sky at night. There are no stars, but parts of the moon are missing, as if a cancer has eaten away at it.
BLINK.
A wirewitch eye. The swirling clouds coalesce into a skull.
BLINK.
Back in the alley where I woke up, two dark figures stand above me, one of them laughing as they sharpen a knife.
BLINK.
A kneeling wirewitch, holding a severed hairstalk in each hand, slowly turns to face me. It’s JACK.
BLINK.
A clear, levitating sphere hangs in darkness. The prisoner inside begins to draw a design on his jumpsuit using his own blood.
BLINK.
An eoa, roaring in rage, blue blood streaming from its mouth.
BLINK.
Looking down my body as red and blue blood trickle down my legs, mixing in a small pool between my feet.
BLINK.
Aran is face down, his naked form motionless. His skin bursts in a hundred places, machinery clawing its way out of his body using hands and fingers formed from saw-bladed gears and bundles of twisted wire.
BLINK.
As the warlock 3-43 leans in to witchkiss me, his teeth glisten with brown eoa blood.
BLINK.
Outside my body, I’m looking down at myself. Nude, shivering, on my knees in a barren wasteland. On one side of my head, my hair has been burned away. It looks like I took a bath in wirewitch blood, thick streaks of the blue fluid obscuring a black infection that has taken root in the skin on my back. I’m holding a severed hairstalk in each hand.
BLINK.
I’m left staring at that last image for a long time, but it eventually fades to black. Can’t see anything. Can’t hear anything. I start counting. I’m almost to seventy when the world gets switched back on.
I’m breathing deep, gulping down great deep breaths of oxygen like it’s the sweetest candy in the world. JACK is leaning in, close enough that, even in the low light, I can see the worry on her face. That’s when I realize that she has my head resting on her knees. She cradles my head and brushes hair out of my face with hesitant fingers.
“Syl?” she queries.
“I’m okay.”
“You just blacked out. What the glitch happened?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. That was…”
“What? What was it? You passed out before, after 3-43 witchkissed you. Is this what happened then? Is this the same thing?”
“The…static…it keeps coming back. This was the—the worst it’s ever been.”
JACK’s grip on me tightens. “What are you talking about? Static? What do you mean? Are you sick?”
My hand comes up, resting on my forehead, partially blocking my view of her. “I—I saw…”
“What? Tell me.”
“Horrible things. I saw horrible things. I…I—”
JACK shakes her head. “Syl, you’re mumbling. Talk to me. I can’t help you if you don’t start talking to me.”
The tremolo in her voice isn’t from concern for me. I lower my hand, so I can look at her unobstructed. Her gaze is relentless. Her eyes: violent storms. Is she angry?
“It first happened just after I woke up.” I say. “I’ve experienced it a few times since then. I don’t know what it is, but when it happens, it’s like static in my brain. It’s a…noise—pure discord. It hurts, and when it’s happening, I can’t think or function. That’s the second time it’s knocked me out.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Is it over, or are you still feeling it?”
“It’s over.” I sit up, JACK gently guiding me with hands that are far stronger than they should be for a girl her size. But that’s wirewitches for you.
There don’t appear to be any persistent effects of my blackout. No headache, and it doesn’t feel like anything’s bruised, so I guess I went down to the ground easy enough. Standing again, my back to the wall, feeling the low frequency vibrations of the club, I really did expect some lingering dizziness from the attack—some form of parting gift to take with me for the rest of the evening. Something to commemorate my time in the void.
The music from the club is louder in the street now. I find myself listening for the static hidden in the beat, as if it’s not actually gone for now but just camouflaging itself with low frequencies notes.
“Are you really, okay now?” JACK asks.
“I’m good. Not sure for how long though. Let’s keep moving.”
Pushing my way to my feet without JACK’s help goes smoothly enough. When the static’s gone, it’s gone. JACK moves back into the flow of people, and I follow.
I move through the next couple of hours in sort of a daze. There’s no static, but the passage of time reduces down to a series of scenes that flicker in my vision like a bad holo show.
BLINK.
Bright spotlights shine down from some unidentifiable source, illuminating people dressed in rags and tattered cloth. They’re huddled together for warmth. One of them—a young boy whose hair is falling out in clumps—looks up at me. His eyes are glowing green.
BLINK.
A gaunt male figure stumbles in front of us. He’s clutching his left hand with his right. His left arm is a mass of twisted metal intertwined with flesh. Chrome fingers twitch and claw at his throat, drawing blood.
BLINK.
A street doctor beckons to us from the entrance to an alley. He has no teeth when he smiles, and a black substance leaks from the corners of his eyes.
BLINK.
A barefoot young girl with purple hair and gleaming metal fangs backs away from three older boys. When the boys swarm her, she reveals two hidden, extra arms. Two of the boys manage to escape her, but one doesn’t.
BLINK.
A fight right in the middle of the street. Two bald women with robotic arms and legs. One of them spits some clear, sticky substance and the other goes down screaming, fingers frantically clawing at her face.
BLINK.
An unrecognizable lump of flesh rests against the side of a building. No arms. No legs. Can’t tell if it’s an animal or a human. A slow leaking wound in its side makes identification unnecessary.
BLINK.
Light, and lots of it. An expansive domed building painted in bright, garish colors and wild patterns breaks up the monotony of the cityscape. Spires and spikes and other structures protrude from the surface. Streams of people flow in and out of the base of the dome like waves crashing against a cliff.
BLINK.
BLINK.
BLINK.
Coming out of my trance-like state, I have but one incessant, echoing thought:
This place is evil.
We’re stopped at the edge of walkway leading to the domed building in front of us. It’s set right in the middle of the city in a way that looks like an afterthought, with buildings relocated and streets rerouted around it. If this is the heart of the city, then that dome is a cancerous growth.
“What the hell is that?” I ask.
JACK makes a sound that is equal parts a laugh and a sigh. “I think the sign is pretty clear.”
Based on how wide it is, the dome has to be at least five blocks in diameter. Distracted as I was with the city itself, I give myself a pass on not fully realizing what I was looking at. The surface of the dome is covered in a wide assortment of architectural structures and burning neon lights that give my eyes so many points to focus on, it actually hurts to look at the thing.
The glow tubing
on the face of the dome reads:
THE UNIVERSALLY COSMIC
CIRCUS OF AMAZING WONDER
Under that sign is a newer, brighter sign, which reads:
WE ARE ALWAYS OPEN!
EVEN IF CYBERSPACE IS COSMICALLY GLITCHED!
“Wow,” I say, then letting my arm brush JACK’s shoulder. “Are we going in there?”
“Yes. It’s a good place to find information.”
“More like a good place to find trouble.”
“Maybe. It is the only place with the power still on.”
“Yeah, how are they doing that?” I ask to no one in particular.
JACK ignores me, gesturing toward the dome. “Is any of this triggering any memories? Have you been here before?”
“Nothing’s coming yet. If I’ve been here before, I don’t remember.” Closing my eyes, trying to force a memory to appear, I feel a faint buzzing, as if the static is just waiting for me to do something stupid—like recall my past—so it can jump out and slam me to the ground again. I open my eyes.
“Okay, maybe something inside will help you remember,” JACK says.
Side by side, we descend into the Universally Cosmic Circus of Amazing Wonder.
19/Calamity (i)
2195.12.11/Night
From a distance, the dome of the circus looks like a single-layer, solid shell, but as we approach, I can see that it consists of countless structures—some artistic, some functional, some a questionable combination of the two. There are enormous, reflective plates cradling crystalline lattices that scatter multi-colored light into the night sky. There are rusted spikes wrapped in glittering coils of neoplastic tubing and rotating spotlights sending wide beams into the low cloud cover. Sparks from exposed electrical conduits flash among great puffs of black smoke vomiting from large vertical pipes. In one area, a glowing fluid oozes down the uneven surface of the dome in countless rivulets. The whole structure squeaks and buzzes and groans—but in pain or in pleasure? I’m about to find out which.
Still, it’s too much. I look away. Can’t tell if it’s just the visual and audible onslaught of the circus, or if the static in my head is slowly rising, but it feels like an eoa’s gnawing on my skull. Cup my hands over my ears. Okay, that’s better, even if for just a few seconds. If there’s static, I think the circus is overwhelming it right now.
